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THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 
GEORGE W. McDANIEL, pwv., ux. 


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OCT 10 1924 


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SUPERNATURAL J 


BY 


PRORCE WoRCDANTET. 0.8. icp: 


Author of “Seeing the Best,” “The Churches of the New 
Testament,” “The People Called Baptists,’ “Our 
Boys in France,” “A Memorial Wreath,” ete. 


NEW ~~ YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, 
BY THE SUNDAY SCHOOL BOARD 
OF THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION 


THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


— B— 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


To the memory 


of 
MY MOTHER 





INTRODUCTION 


This is a book of discussions, rather than of 
sermons. While homiletical form has not been 
adhered to, it is believed that what is here pre- 
sented furnishes homiletical material. The pur- 
pose has been to adduce facts and deduce conclu- 
sions from those facts; to discuss the evidence in 
the hope of leading inquiring minds to truth, un- 
settled minds to certainty, and believing minds 
to a fuller appreciation of the Supernatural Jesus. 

The humanity of Jesus is generally admitted. 
Therefore, that aspect of Jesus has been dealt 
with only incidentally. It seemed unnecessary to 
dwell upon what all concede. The deity of Jesus 
is denied. That is, in reality, the crux of the 
controversy now raging between two schools of 
thought. The denying school is called ‘‘Modern- 
ists’? by accommodation. They are not modern 
in the sense that they represent anything new. 
Long ago Renan expressed their views more at- 
tractively, Strauss more forcefully, Socinus more 
logically, Arius more subtly, and Celsus more 
originally. ‘‘Fundamentalists’’ is the name 
chosen by the other school, but that is not suffi- 
ciently definite. 

The suggestion was made recently by a literary 


Vii 


Vili INTRODUCTION 


man that the names Literalists and Liberals were 
the correct designation. ‘This, however, must be 
rejected, for the Literalists believe in the spiritual 
interpretation of those passages of Scripture 
which are spiritual, and the Liberals have dis- 
played, at times, an illiberality little short of in- 
tolerance. 

The words ‘‘Modernists’’ and ‘‘Liberals’’ are 
used in this book to designate the same persons, 
though neither term is quite satisfactory. Some- 
times they are designated Unitarians. I prefer 
to think of myself as a Realist—one who looks 
facts in the face and takes them at their face 
value. Best of all, I prefer the name ‘‘Chris- 
tian’’ with all of its implications. 

Substantially all we know about Jesus is in 
the New Testament. Four authors, Pliny, Taci- 
tus, Clement, and Josephus, who lived in the first 
century, refer to him, but their references are 
brief and corroborate the New Testament. The 
four Evangelists and Paul are the main authori- 
ties for what is to be known about Jesus. To as- 
certain what they actually represent as to the 
Supernatural Jesus has been my study; so to 
state the facts as to appeal to the people gener- 
ally is my purpose. 

It has seemed inadvisable to load the discus- 
sions with citations outside the original source. 
This could easily have been done, but the opin- 
ions of men in this case have real value just as 
they are formed upon the evidence. I have gone 


INTRODUCTION 1x 


directly to the evidence with the view of securing 
an intelligent, individual verdict from every one 
who reads the book. John Marshall, as a prac- 
ticing attorney, weighed the evidence and argued 
it in the light of the law, without extensive cita- 
tions from court decisions; that was also his 
method in rendering decisions as Chief Justice of 
the Supreme Court. That, in the main, is the 
method pursued in these chapters. 

That Christ is historical is assumed. When the 
precocious John Stuart Mill, a man apparently 
utterly deficient of a religious nature and pro- 
fessedly devoid of a religious belief—a practical 
Atheist—could write: ‘‘It is no use to say that 
Christ as exhibited in the Gospels is not histor- 
ical,’’ it would seem that we are justified in that 
assumption in this book. 

The last chapter, The Truth About Science and 
the Bible, is added at the request of a group of 
cherished Richmond ministers who have induced 
me to publish this volume. 

The first five chapters were written while Dr. 
J. H. Farmer of McMaster University was so- 
journing in Richmond, and I am grateful to him 
for reading them and making valuable sugges- 
tions. The other chapters were written earlier 
and not reviewed. It is my prayer that the Holy 
Spirit, without whom no one can call Jesus Lord, 
will use this book to the glory of the Superna- 
tural Jesus. 


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CHAPTER 


ACCORDING 
ACCORDING 
ACCORDING 
AccoRDING 


ACCORDING 


CONTENTS 


TO 


TO 


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TO 


TO 


MatTHew 
Mark 
LUKE 
JOHN 


Pau. 


Tue Virein Birtu 


Tuer RESURRECTION OF JESUS . 


Tue Deity or CuHrist 


Tue MIsTAKES OF THE MOoDERNISTS 


Tue TrutH Asout THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 





THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


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THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


I 
ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 


The gospel by Matthew is a trustworthy and 
credible presentation of Jesus as the Messiah. 
Simon Greenleaf has convincingly demonstrated 
that its genuineness admits of as little doubt, 
and is susceptible of as ready proof, as that of 
any ancient writings whatever. The burden of 
proving any apparently ancient document to be 
spurious is upon the objector; no one has proven 
or can prove that Matthew did not write the first 
gospel earlier than the year 64. On the other 
hand, there is sufficient reason to accept it as 
authentic. 

The anti-Pharisaic spirit of the book; the sanc- 
tity ascribed to Jerusalem and the high venera- 
tion for the temple; the prominence predicted for 
Peter and the Church; and the general cast of the 
argument for the Messiah, indicate that the book 
was written quite early by a Jew and to the Jews. 

The author had been a tax collector. The 
Romans extracted oppressive tribute, direct and 
indirect, from Judea. The rate on merchandise 
ran as high as an eighth part of the value of the 

15 


16 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


commodity. The direct taxes consisted of a capi- 
tation tax, and a land-tax, based upon a census 
which was taken every fourteen years. Now, the 
increase of taxes multiplies discontent and leads 
to evasion and fraud. How much more so when 
the taxes were imposed by a conqueror and by 
a heathen! To collect these taxes required vigi- 
lance, scrutiny, severity. Matthew was familiar 
with many varieties of imposture, cunning, de- 
ception and fraud. In the discharge of his offi- 
cial duties he would become habitually watchful, 
suspicious, cautious and scrutinizing. The degree 
of improbability is high that such a man could 
be deceived in regard to the facts about Jesus; 
either those which he learned from others or him- 
self observed. 

Keeping these facts in mind, examine the Gos- 
pel of Matthew with a view to ascertaining if he 
presented Jesus as a supernatural person. The 
subject of the inquiry is not one of mathematical 
truth, something susceptible of demonstration be- 
yond the possibility of error. It is not one of 
scientific knowledge, for science deals with the 
material and this one deals with moral and spir- 
itual truth. This inquiry is as to a matter of fact 
and proof of matters of fact rests upon moral 
evidence alone. The rule of law upon this sub- 
ject is: ‘‘A proposition of fact is proved, when 
its truth is established by competent and satis- 
factory evidence.’? The foundation of our re- 
ligion is a basis of fact—the fact of the birth, 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 17 


ministry, miracles, death, resurrection and as- 
cension of Jesus Christ. What does Matthew say 
about that fact? 

The Genealogy of Jesus. Matthew’s main pur- 
pose was to satisfy the Jews that Jesus of Naza- 
reth was the Messiah of the Old Testament. It 
had been predicted that Messiah would be a de- 
scendant of David. Matthew proves this by trac- 
ing the genealogy of Joseph, the legal father, to 
David; and to make his case more impressive, he 
goes back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish 
race, to whom the promise of Messiah was given; 
Gen. 17:7. It is not merely a man, Jesus, whose 
legal lineage is traced through forty-two genera- 
tions; it is ‘‘Jesus Christ,’’ the official, anointed 
One. Verse sixteen of the genealogy differs from 
the preceding verses. They state that Jesse begat 
David, Solomon begat Rehoboam and so on. 
Without an exception the verb ‘‘begat’’ is used. 
When we come to Joseph and Jesus the verb is 
not used. It says: ‘‘ Joseph, the husband of Mary, 
of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.’’ 
The Evangelist altogether departs from the usual 
phraseology in the case of Joseph and Jesus. 
They are not connected as father and son. Let 
the Modernists explain that small but vital change. 
It can mean but one thing; Jesus was not begot- 
ten of natural generation. The peculiarity of the 
Savior’s birth is clearly indicated. Those who 
quote the Syriac manuscript, that ‘‘ Joseph begat 
Jesus,’’ are asked to harmonize that with verses 


18 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


eighteen and nineteen of the same chapter in that 
manuscript. The Modernists would have been | 
more careful than the Ebionite editor who altered 
only one verse; they would have edited the three 
verses to make them conform to their theory of 
a natural Jesus. , 

The Miraculous Birth. The fact of a peculiar 
generation indicated in the genealogy is fully 
stated in the birth-account which immediately fol- 
lows. The author announces his purpose to tell 
of the birth of Christ and gives the details in 
eight verses; half as many words and more than 
two-thirds as much space as he gives to the forty- 
two preceding generations. The conception by 
the Holy Spirit; Joseph’s painful perplexity, 
conscientious unselfishness, and due deliberation; 
God’s comforting intervention and assuring rev- 
elation that the babe should be the personal Sa- 
vior; and Joseph’s acquiescence and subsequent 
conduct are seen; and all in such a light as to 
make prominent the essential things; the virgin- 
ity of the mother and the supernaturalness of the 
child. 

The nature of this Incarnation is an unfathom- 
able mystery. The fact is historically certain and 
unspeakably glorious. It was the initial earthly 
event in human redemption. Atonement and In- 
tercession consummated that redemption. With- 
out these mysteries redemption is impossible. 
They are God’s blessed and beautiful way of ac- 
complishing man’s salvation. We accept and act 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 19 


daily upon facts the nature of which we can- 
not explain or even comprehend. Why should we 
not be as consistent in religion? Faith and ex- 
perience are vital to the knowledge of Jesus as 
Savior. To quote Lord Bacon: ‘‘There is no 
other entrance to the Kingdom of man, which is 
founded upon the sciences, than to the Kingdom 
of heaven, into which no one can enter but in the 
character of a little child.’’ 

Modernists are the theological descendants of 
Faustus Socinus who held that Jesus was merely 
aman. However, Socinus maintained that he was 
supernaturally born of a virgin. The rationalistic 
Modernists will not concede this; they say that 
Jesus was in all respects subject to ordinary na- 
tural laws. Matthew teaches that his birth was 
above such laws, that it was a virgin birth, the 
Incarnation of God. The Incarnation is essential 
to Christian theology. Doctrinally, it is next in 
importance to his death and resurrection. Prac- 
tically, it dignified motherhood, glorified baby- 
hood, and exalted manhood. 

The Infant King. Micah had foretold that 
Messiah should be born in Bethlehem: ‘‘ But thou, 
Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among 
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he 
come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; 
whose goings forth have been from of old, from 
everlasting,’’ Micah 5:2. Isaiah had prophesied 
that Gentiles would come with gifts to him: ‘‘ And 
the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to 


20 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the brightness of thy rising . . . they shall bring 
gold and incense; ... and they shall shew forth 
the praises of the Lord,’’ Isa. 60:3, 6. Isaiah had 
also foretold his dual nature: ‘‘For unto us a child 
is born, unto us a son is given: and the govern- 
ment shall be upon his shoulder: and his name 
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty 
God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of 
Peace,’’? Isa. 9:6. Balaam had _ prophesied: 
‘<There shall come a Star out of Jacob,’’ Num. 
24:17. Hosea had, under the figure of national 
Israel as a ‘‘son,’’ foretold the return of the 
greater Son from Egypt, Hosea 11:1. Jeremiah 
had foretold the mothers weeping for their slain 
babes: ‘‘Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard 
in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rachel 
weeping for her children refused to be comforted 
for her children, because they were not,’’ Jer. 
o1:15. Matthew shows how those six prophecies 
were fulfilled in the infant king of the Jews, 2:1- 
16. 

This is Matthew’s account of the first presenta- 
tion of the Messiah to the nation and their rejec- 
tion of him. The attention of civil and religious 
rulers was called to him by the Magi. His first 
appellation from human lips is the words of the 
Magi: ‘‘Where is he that is born King of the 
Jews?’’ Their visit was to the Spiritual King of 
the earth,—theirs as much as the Jews’. It was a 
microcosm of Christ’s work. We see in Herod’s 
slaughter of the innocents the beginning of that 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 21 


unrelenting enmity which culminated in the death 
on Calvary and continued in religious persecu- 
tion; and in the Gentiles with their gifts, we see 
the first of that long procession of worshipers of 
the Savior whom his own people slew. Never was 
a birth so foretold or foretelling. It fulfilled the 
past and it presaged the future. 

The Heralded King. Matthew’s second presen- 
tation of the Messiah is in the herald, John the 
Baptist. This had been foretold by Isaiah: ‘‘The 
voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Pre- 
pare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the 
desert a highway for our God,’’ Isa. 40:3. The 
appearance and ministry of John, the baptism 
and temptation of Jesus, are related in a simple 
and straightforward way. Read the biographies 
of the World Rulers and where will you find such 
a spiritual preparation; such a modest, righteous, 
and prophetic entrance on official work; such 
heavenly approval of the new King; such a tri- 
umph of character over temptation? The highest 
things are in the voice at the baptism: the high- 
est preacher, God; the highest pulpit, heaven; the 
highest plaudit, ‘‘My beloved son.’’? Jesus was 
attested by revelation,—the open heavens; by in- 
spiration,—the spirit descending like a dove; by 
approval,—the voice of the Father. 

Jesus was tested as Son of man, Son of God, 
and the Messiah. He met every test. As Son of 
man, the temptation was addressed to the first 
and most necessary of human desires—hunger. 


22, THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


He refused to satisfy hunger in a way not or- 
dained of God. He would live no life not sus- 
tained by the word of God. As Son of God, the 
temptation was to the most sacred of holy things, 
—his divine sonship. He refused to act upon his 
own impulses, to make a spectacular appeal to 
the nation, to tempt God under the guise of claim- 
ing a promise of Scripture. As the Messiah, the 
temptation was addressed to his personal and of- 
ficial objective,—to win back the world. He re- 
fused to adopt Satan’s methods to spare himself 
the toil and pain of the course which God had 
ordained and which prophecy prescribed. He 
took the long and costly road by way of the 
Cross. 

Arthur was a good king, Victoria a beloved 
queen, McKinley a kindly president. Did any 
of these win every battle against natural instincts, 
spiritual desires and holy ambitions? Alas, 
neither they nor any other ever did, save One 
only, the Messiah. All others have fallen some- 
where. He was more than conqueror in the wil- 
derness, in the temple, in the mountain, in soli- 
tude, in the sanctuary, in society. Must he not 
have been more than human? 

The Marvelous Mimstry. Jesus selected Caper- 
naum as the base from which he would conduct 
his Galilean ministry. He was the great light to 
them which sat in darkness and in the region and 
shadow of death, 4:13-17. He called individuals 
and they personally accepted him as Savior and 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 23 


Lord, 4:18-25. He spoke to the multitudes in 
tones of authority, perfecting the law of Moses 
and enacting laws in advance of the most enlight- 
ened modern civilization, 5: 20-42. He taught a 
code of ethics and erected a standard of morality 
which none but he has attained, 5:48; he warned 
against false prophets which come in sheep’s 
clothing but are inwardly ravening wolves and 
said they should be known by their fruits, 7: 15- 
20; he said that the characters of men, the destiny 
of men, stood or fell as they treated his words, 
23 24-27. 

The instructions of Jesus in Luke are largely 
imparted in conversations; in John, in dialogues, 
in Matthew, in discourses. Study the unity, prog- 
ress, symmetry and completeness of those dis- 
courses, as pointed out by Weston, and the im- 
pression will be deepened that no mere man de- 
livered them. You will come to the conclusion of 
Daniel Webster: ‘‘My heart has always assured 
and reassured me, that the gospel of Jesus Christ 
must be a divine reality. The Sermon on the 
Mount cannot be a merely human production.’’ 
That is his self-framed inscription upon his tomb. 

As opposition to Jesus grew he introduced a 
new method of teaching,—by parables. They con- 
cealed the mysteries of his kingdom from the 
judicial blindness of the Jews and revealed them 
to the spiritual insight of the disciples. He 
commences to speak thus in the thirteenth chap- 
ter. He has heretofore announced his kingly 


24 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


character and authority. Matthew has told us 
that he was greater than David or Solomon, 
than the law or the temple, and that he has 
power to forgive sins. Matthew now records how 
Jesus, by parables, revealed himself as the Christ; 
the treasure for which one gives all that he hath, 
the goodly pearl more valuable than all else. Yes, 
Jesus says all this of himself in beautiful para- 
bles. He calls his doctrines mysteries. They are 
undiscoverable by human reason. Things kept 
secret from the foundation of the world, he re- 
vealed, the supernatural element still remaining 
despite the revelation. Modernists will not ac- 
cept what the human reason cannot understand. 
Jesus says of the Realists, which is the correct 
antonym for Modernists: ‘‘It is given unto you to 
know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven.’’ 

Let Mr. H. G. Wells, or Van Loon, or any other 
literary genius, write parables comparable to 
those of Jesus. Let the Modernist furthest ad- 
vanced in knowledge, most highly endowed with 
the gift of expression, and possessing the finest 
culture, clothe his best thoughts in the finest forms 
of which he is capable; put this in a parallel col- 
umn with the Master’s discourse found in the 
seven parables of Matthew thirteen; and instantly 
the superiority of the Master will appear. This 
is more striking when you compare the messages 
of the American Presidents to Congress with the 
inaugural address of Jesus to his disciples. There 
is not one of them in the class with the Savior’s 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 29 


production. The patriotic Washington, the cul- 
tured Adams, the philosophical Jefferson, the pro- 
found Madison, the versatile Roosevelt, the schol- 
arly Wilson, all men of talent, have not produced 
anything which so lives in the thoughts of Amer- 
ica, so breathes in the lives of the people, as the 
sentences which Jesus gave forth nearly nineteen 
centuries ago. Never man spake lke this man. 
The ministry of Jesus was notable for its mer- 
ciful miracles, no less than for its marvelous mes- 
sages. ‘Twenty miracles are recorded in Matthew. 
They are facts full of symbolism, beginning with 
the cure of leprosy, the symbol of sin, and ending 
with the withering of the fig tree, the type of 
judgment. These miracles were not simply dis- 
plays of power intended to prove Christ’s Mes- 
siahship. He persistently declined to meet the 
clamor of the Jews for signs. The miracles of 
Christ are all of salvation and usually accompa- 
nied by faith, or sincere request. They prove 
that he was the Savior by demonstrating that he 
can do what he offers to do. They evidence not 
merely almighty power, but moral perfection. 
John in prison heard ‘‘the works of the Christ.’’ 
He did not doubt that Jesus was a Messiah, but 
his works were so different from what John had 
expected that he sent to inquire if there were to 
be two Messiahs. Jesus was not using the cleans- 
ing fan, the consuming fire, the felling ax. The 
Master answered by telling John’s two emissa- 
ries to show John again what he was doing: ‘‘The 


26 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the 
lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead 
are raised up, and the poor have the gospel 
preached to them,’’ Matt. 11:5. He added: ‘‘And 
blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in 
me,’’? 11:6. The moral character looms in that 
beneficent ministry. | 

The wonders of Jesus are wrought without dif- 
ficulty, or impatience, and are larger and more 
impressive than other Biblical miracles. Elisha 
fed a hundred men with twenty loaves, but Jesus 
fed five thousand with five. Moses smote the sea 
with his staff, Elijah divided the river with his 
mantle, Elisha healed the spring with a cruse of 
salt, but Jesus healed a withered hand by a word 
(Matt. 12:13) and a leper by a touch (Matt. 8:3); 
and he wrought in his own name by a power im- 
manent and inherent: ‘‘I will; be thou clean.’’ 
Only once did he use the medium of clay, yet, by 
other miracles on the blind, without extraneous 
helps, he plainly showed that the clay was his 
choice, not a necessity. 

Unlike the professed healers of modern times 
Jesus did his miracles without advertisement or 
compensation; neither he nor his apostles, who 
worked in his name, charged the beneficiary. 
Furthermore, he healed all who came to him. No 
one ever hobbled to him on crutches and hobbled 
away on crutches; all who were brought to him 
with infirmities were able to walk away sound 
and well. 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 27 


Imperious Demands. Absolutely astounding 
are some of the sayings of Jesus. Rejection of 
him incurred a greater guilt and entailed a darker 
doom than the flagrant immorality of Sodom. 
‘“Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein 
most of his mighty works were done, because they 
repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto 
thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which 
were done in you, had been done in Tyre and 
Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sack- 
cloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be 
more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of 
judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, 
which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought 
down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have 
been done in thee, had been done in Sodon, it 
would have remained until this day. But I say 
unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the 
land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for 
thee.’’ Matthew 11: 20-24. 

No Greek philosopher ever asked of his pupils 
the surrender to himself which Jesus demanded of 
those who would be his disciples; ‘‘Take my yoke 
upon you’’; be as the docile ox to his owner, 
bending the neck to the yoke. ‘‘If any man will 
come after me let him deny himself’’; not self- 
denial—the denial of something to self or the 
denial of one part of self for the gratification of 
another part, or even for the sake of others, some- 
thing familiar in all human action—but the utter 
renunciation of self as Savior and Sovereign, the 


28 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


death of self as indicated by taking up the cross 
and going to death with Jesus. Nor did teacher 
ever promise so much; Ye shall find rest,—for 
the intellect, baffled to know the truth; for the 
will, wild as the wind; for the conscience, bur- 
dened with a load of guilt; for the heart, bruised 
by sorrow. Ye shall find life; life that is life in- 
deed, in its fullness here and hereafter, the life 
of Christ who fills the place once occupied by the 
dead self. 

No Roman emperor ever sought heart obedience 
to himself as Jesus required of his subjects. He 
tells them that his life is that of an itinerant—he 
had no abiding place; that his life will be offered 
up—he has no place to hide from his foes. Men 
who volunteer to be his disciples, even learned 
scribes, must be ready to give up life for him. 
A disciple, with the praiseworthy prompting to 
perform the highest customary duty of burial of 
a father, must heed the imperious call of Christ 
for immediate service, must learn that obligations 
to him transcend natural affections, 8: 19-22. One 
who would so speak to-day would be treated with 
ridicule or scorn. Jesus so spoke and men obeyed 
him, and men still do for him what they would 
do for no other. Twelve men, without purse or 
weapon, went forth at his command into a hos- 
tile world, went forth as sheep in the midst of 
wolves, with no support or protection save the 
promise of Jesus. Hundreds of our choicest 
young men and women have left father and 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 29 


mother, sister and brother, safety and comfort, 
and gone forth at Jesus’ command to preach the 
kingdom of God. 

In harmony with Christ’s demands upon others 
_is his repudiation of earthly kinship. Once his 
mother and his half-brothers sought to interfere 
with him, 12: 46-50. He acted as one of another 
nature, of a higher origin, under a kingdom com- 
pulsion. His kingdom knows no man after the 
flesh; its relationships are spiritual: ‘‘ Whosoever 
shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, 
the same is my brother and sister, and mother.”’ 
He does not mention kinship to an earthly father, 
for he had none and could not use that analogy. 
His nobility of birth is not even through Mary; 
he puts the Father first. 

An Indestructible Institution. The word 
Church, so frequently upon the lips of Christians, 
was used by Jesus only three times. Matthew 
alone records the instances, 16:17-18; 18:17. 
The first mention has an unmistakable bearing 
upon the deity of Jesus. The ministry and per- 
sonality of Jesus made various impressions upon 
men. The conscience-stricken Herod thought he 
was John the Baptist come to life again. Some, 
having in mind his severe denunciations and his 
cleansing of the temple, thought he was Elijah. 
Others, observing his seriousness and sorrow, the 
absence of laughter and the flowing of tears, 
thought he was the weeping prophet Jeremiah. 
Still others, unable to identify him with any par- 


30 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


ticular one, said he was ‘‘one of the prophets.”’ 
Jesus was not content with this. Had he been 
contented he might have been unmolested by the 
Jews. They slew him because of his persistent 
claim to be more than a teacher sent from God. 
He pressed upon the Apostles the inquiry as to 
what they thought of him. Peter, for the Apos- 
tles, formally and officially declared the true re- 
lation and office of Jesus: ‘‘Thou art the Christ, 
the Son of the living God.’’ There stand the 
words. Their force is inescapable. 

Jesus blessed the man who confessed his deity. 
More than that, he said the confession was both 
a revelation and a foundation. God in heaven 
had made known to Peter the essential nature of 
Jesus, and upon such confession and out of such 
material he would build his indestructible and ir- 
resistible Church. According to Matthew, the 
recognition of his unique sonship, his Messianic 
character, was what Jesus longed for, insisted 
upon, and commended. By the same Evangelist 
we also learn that this is what his Church is 
built upon,—the confession of himself as the son 
of God. The deity of Jesus is the foundation and 
those who honestly confess that deity are the 
superstructure of that divine institution, the 
Church. He is the chief corner stone and believ- 
ers are the living stones built upon it, as Peter 
has particularly explained, I Peter 2:1-9. Paul 
said: ‘‘Other foundation can no man lay than 
that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,’’ I Cor. 3:11. 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 31 


He also said that Jesus Christ was the chief cor- 
ner stone, Ejph. 2: 20. 

A building is no stronger than its foundation. 
A Church built upon any other foundation than 
Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, is un- 
stable. A prophet of God, an ethical teacher, a 
moral exemplar, the best of humans, will not 
suffice. 


‘‘On Christ the solid rock I stand; 
All other ground is sinking sand.’’ 


Rationalists are digging at the foundations. 
Make no mistake about that. They will break 
their picks and weary their arms in vain, unless 
Christians are guilty of a quiescence which 
amounts to the guilt of disloyalty. 

Jesus contemplated that his institution would 
continue in existence. He knew the opposition 
and enmity it would encounter, but he predicted 
that it would triumph over every foe, even the 
‘‘oates of hell.’? He gave regulations of disci- 
pline for this Church to be used through all time. 
The existence of the Church is a living witness 
to the deity of Jesus. Nations have come and 
gone. Empires, once mighty, have passed away. 
Every government on the globe is relatively new. 
The institution founded by a Galilean peasant 
within a small province of a World Dominion, 
lives and grows while that vast empire has crum- 
bled and vanished. It is known only in history: 


32 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the Church is the mightiest force for righteous- 
ness in the world to-day. 

The Unmatched Protagonist. Matthew details 
the third and final presentation of the Messiah to 
the Jewish people, 21-23. He appears publicly, 
riding a colt in fulfillment of prophecy, and is ac- 
claimed by the multitudes. In the consciousness 
of his Messianic office he drives the traders and 
perverters from the Temple as he did at his first 
ministry in Jerusalem. The chief priests and 
scribes, hearing the shout of the children, de- 
manded that he disclaim the Messianic title and 
honors which they ascribed to him. Jesus replied 
that God was pleased with the children’s praise: 
‘Thou has brought praise to perfection from the 
mouth of babes and sucklings.’’ 

Jesus then met and overcame in argument all 
his opponents. Unbelief challenged his creden- 
tials. He impaled unbelief upon the horns of the 
dilemma of either denying that John was a 
prophet or accepting the forerunner’s doctrine. 
Worldliness, that luxurious bed in which Phari- 
sees and Herodians lay side by side as brothers, 
sought to seduce him. He put worldliness to con- 
fusion by honoring Cesar as the civil, and God as 
the spiritual, ruler. Rationalism, that conceited 
philosophy which denies the resurrection, assailed 
him with the perplexing question of the relation 
of husband and wife in the next world. He si- 
lenced them by showing their ignorance of the 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 33 


Scriptures, and of the power of God, and de- 
clared that there are no fleshly relationships in 
heaven. Formalism, old foe to spirituality, mus- 
tered its forces and tested him with a question 
about the greatest commandment. With the 
stroke of a master he summarized the ten com- 
mandments in two, which include all duties to God 
and to man and turned upon them with the ques- 
tion: ‘‘What think ye of Christ, whose Son is 
he? They say unto him, The Son of David. 
He saith unto them, David called Christ Lord. 
How is he then David’s son? And no man was 
able to answer him.’’ To this day no man who 
accepts David’s Psalm can explain it intelligibly 
except by accepting Jesus as the Messiah, David’s 
Lord and ours. Thus had this One who was more 
than man, successively and successfully met un- 
belief, worldliness, rationalism and formalism as 
represented by their ablest exponents. His 
_ words, deeds, and personality are still the suffi- 
cient answer to all doubt, all denial and all op- 
position. 

The Crowning Miracle of Grace, Might and 
Glory. Death comes as a surprise to many men; 
it was expected by Jesus from the beginning. No 
one looks forward to a violent death from his 
enemies; Jesus knew it was to be his lot and said 
so. Death to us is the consequence of sin; death 
to Jesus was the suffering of the sinless for the 
sinner. The grave is the victor over mortals and 


34 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


in it their bodies return to dust; Jesus predicted 
that the grave would not hold him, that he would 
rise on the third day. 

The outgoings of the compassion of Jesus in 
blessed ministries for others were the token of 
the outpouring of his life for others. Matthew 
narrates the betrayal, trial, crucifixion and bur- 
ial as they were foretold in prophecy, 26: 47- 
27:66. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is ful- 


* filled therein. A Jewish tailor was accustomed 


to visit the students in the dormitory of the Theo- 
logical Seminary at Louisville. A student, fa- 
miliar with Hebrew, read to the Jew Isaiah fifty- 
three; the Jew was familiar with that. He next 
read Matthew’s account of the crucifixion of 
Jesus; the Jew had never heard that. His heart 
melted and he confessed the fulfillment of the 
_ prophecy. 

“ The cross is the mightiest manifestation of 
grace the sinful world ever had. It says that 
Jesus would not save himself that he might save 
us; that to save us he paid the penalty against sin 
by death of body, and also of soul in the three 
hours’ withdrawal of the Father’s presence; that 
God’s verdict of condemnation against us is 
wiped out for all who accept this supreme act of 
grace in which the Father sent him and the Son 
came, to die for us. There is really no saving 
trust without the cross, and no saving remedy. 
Men may reverence the character and words of 
Jesus. They trust as their Savior one who loved 


de ne 


ACCORDING TO MATTHEW 39 


them and died for them. Such an one is Mat- 
thew’s divine Messiah. 

Jesus was buried in a notable tomb and Mary 
Magdalene and the other Mary witnessed the bur- 
ial, 28: 57-61. They could never forget that tomb. 
The chief priests and Pharisees took every pre- 
caution to keep the body securely in the grave. 
Behold the mightiest miracle of history! An 
empty tomb and a risen corpse, Matthew 28. 
Bodies had been raised in the Old Testament and 
Jesus himself had raised three; but never before, 
nor since, had one broken the bands of death by 
a power within himself. The women saw and 
rejoiced; they held him by the feet and wor- 
shiped; they received his message and hastened 
to tell the disciples to meet him in Galilee. The 
deceiving Sanhedrin, the suborned soldiers, and 
the manufactured reports bore the marks of fals- 
ity on their face. The eleven disciples met their 
Master in Galilee and worshiped him, but some 
doubted. Jesus assured and commanded them: 
‘‘All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have com- 
manded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world,’’ Matt. 28: 18-20. 

That resurrection validated every claim of 
Jesus to deity; it affirmed the judgment Matthew 
had previously rendered about him; it confirmed 


36 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the faltering faith of his disciples; it impassioned 
his followers with a zeal to execute the last earthly 
orders of the Lord; and it accredited to all men 
the plan of this extraordinary Person to save the 
world through the redemption he effected on the 
cross and perfected by his victory over death and 
the grave. 

Such a personality is the one presented by the 
cautious and scrutinizing Matthew. There is no 
hint of legend, no intimation of myth. The Jesus 
of the Modernists is a myth, created by their un- 
scientific criticism and fashioned after their 
fancy. It cannot be maintained that he was the 
real Jesus of Matthew, or of the other Evangel- 
ists. Our Christ was not a myth but a mystery; 
not a legend but a fact; not an imaginary but a 
historical person. 


II 
ACCORDING 'TO MARK 


Mark, relative of Barnabas and companion of 
Paul and Peter, wrote the earliest gospel, prob- 
ably before 60 A.D. His mother was a promi- 
nent Christian woman at Jerusalem. Papias and 
other patristic fathers say that Mark was Peter’s 
interpreter. If that be so, the second gospel is 
really that of Peter. Internal evidence confirms 
this theory. The vivid description of the raising 
of Jairus’ daughter, of the Transfiguration, and 
of the scene in Gethsemane, have the touches of 
an eye-witness. Peter, together with James and 
John, was present on those three occasions. 
James was martyred early; John has written his 
account elsewhere, and Peter, therefore, is the 
most probable source of Mark’s account. This is 
the only gospel which tells who reported to Jesus 
that all men were seeking him (1:36); who men- 
tioned to Jesus the withering away of the fig tree 
(11:21); and who asked him privately for the 
sign about the destruction of Jerusalem (13:3 f.); 
Peter’s name is mentioned on those three occa- 
sions. Mark has preserved a record of the pass- 
ing lights and shadows which played upon the 
countenance of Jesus, 3:5; 7:34; 10:21. This 

37 


38 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


must have come from an eye-witness. Peter was 
such. 

This gospel is the shortest of the four. It is 
simple, and direct. The author goes directly to 
his subject without an introduction. The charac- 
teristic word is ‘‘straightway.’’ 

The theme, according to 1: 2-4, is Isaiah’s serv- 
ant of Jehovah. In Isaiah’s conception there 
are two ruling ideas, greatness and lowliness. In 
Christ’s marvelous words and mighty works the 
greatness is shown; in his passion, the purpose of 
which is summed up in 10: 45, his lowliness is pre- 
sented. It is not customary to give the geneal- 
ogy of servants, hence, there is no genealogy by 
Mark. That was aside from his purpose. He is 
writing the gospel of deeds rather than doctrines; 
of works rather than words. His book is full of 
action, power, achievement,—just the things which 
appealed to the Romans for whom he wrote espe- 
cially. Even in 13: 32, which is so frequently used 
to lower our estimate of Christ, the author care- 
fully guards his unique sonship and sets him 
above men and angels. 

We should not expect, in such a book, an elab- 
oration of doctrine. We should expect very much 
of practice. We should expect to see the human- 
ity of Jesus in action, and so we do. But the 
nature of Jesus was such that Mark could not 
write about him and omit the supernatural. It is 
self-evident; Mark does not endeavor to display 
it; he does not argue to prove it; he moves along 


ACCORDING TO MARK 39 


naturally in his story, and the supernatural, na- 
turally, unavoidably, and inevitably comes to 
view. 

I read the gospel of Mark through at one sit- 
ting and marked with pencil the evidences therein 
of the deity of Jesus. They were numbered care- 
fully. Fifty evidences were noted with no attempt 
to magnify them. Let any unbiased person read 
that book reverently with the aim of getting the 
author’s conception of the supernatural in the 
life and character of Jesus. Let him breathe the 
prayer that the Holy Spirit may guide him into 
the truth. He will, I candidly believe, lay down 
the book with the conviction that he had read 
of one who was more than man. 

As suggestive of the wealth of material take: 

The Author’s Personal Statements. The very 
first sentence is: ‘‘The beginning of the gospel of 
Jesus Christ the Son of God.’’ Mark does not 
go to the beginning of eternity as does John, nor 
to the beginning of Jesus’ time-life as does Luke. 
Therefore, there is no genealogy or infancy, for 
such is foreign to his purpose. He begins with 
the official life and ministry of Jesus, and por- 
trays the fullness of his working energy. Still, 
he must say the ‘‘gospel of Jesus Christ,’’ the 
glad tidings of the Messiah, the one anointed as 
‘Prophet, Priest and King.’’ Not only this but 
also, ‘‘the Son of God.’’ Matthew, writing for 
Jews, goes back to David and Abraham. Mark, 
writing for Gentile Christians, introduces us at 


40 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


once to the Son of God. That is his first concep- 
tion of Jesus, and the last glimpse he gives is 
consistent with the first. Did ever the biographer 
of a man, even of a hero, or saint, begin with such 
ascription of divinity? 

John the Baptist was ‘‘great in God’s sight’? 
and generally regarded as a prophet. He said he 
was unworthy to unlatch the sandals of Jesus; 
that Jesus was mightier than he; that he baptized 
in water but Jesus should baptize in the Holy 
Spirit. The lowest man on earth would not use 
this language of the highest man on earth. The 
highest man of his day used this language of 
Jesus. What is the inescapable implication of the 
Baptist ? 

The Attestation of the Father. During Jesus’ 
earthly ministry the heavenly voice spoke three 
times in tones which the bystanders could hear. 
Mark records the two which were specific attesta- 
tions. At the baptism: ‘‘Thou art my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased.’’ At the Trans- 
figuration: ‘‘This is my beloved Son: hear him.’’ 
On the first occasion the voice was to Jesus, and 
on the second occasion it was to the three apos- 
tles. On both occasions it was God’s witness to 
the Unique Sonship of Jesus. What higher char- 
acter could testify? What more positive testi- 
mony could be given? 

The Confession of Demons. Three times in the 
gospel of Mark demons acknowledged the deity of 
Jesus. In Capernaum: ‘‘I know thee who thou 


ACCORDING TO MARK 41 


art, the Holy One of God,’’ 1:24. By the sea: 
‘‘And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell 
down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the 
Son of God,’’ 3:11. In Gadara: ‘‘What have I to 
do with thee, Jesus thou Son of the most high 
God,’’ 5:7. There is no use to debate about 
demoniacal possessions, nor to cavil that this is 
a cheap citation of doubtful proof-texts. What 
mean those confessions? Were such ever so made 
upon the approach of the best of men? The 
demons knew the holiness and divinity of him 
whose presence was their destruction and tor- 
ment. The deity of Jesus may be denied in the 
house of the Modernists, but down in the slums 
are the fallen and abandoned who, like the demons 
of old, will tell you, if you ask them, that Jesus 
was the Holy Son of God. 

The Belief of Others. Leprosy is a loathsome 
and incurable disease, common to Palestine. The 
leper was hedged about and isolated by laws to 
protect from contagion. With covered lip, bare 
head and rent garments, he stood aloof from the 
healthful, and being approached called out, ‘‘Un- 
clean, unclean, unclean.’’ Mark tells how a leper 
came to Jesus ‘‘beseeching him, and kneeling 
down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, 
thou canst make me clean,’’ 1:40. That leper 
saw in Jesus the only person whom he dared ap- 
proach and believed that within the will of Jesus 
was a power above all medical skill. Jesus 
touched him and willed and the leper was clean. 


42, THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


‘¢At thine approach, O Holy Son of God, 
The loathsome leprosy, affrighted, fled; 
The man, new-made, moved back again to life 
Like Lazarus, the risen from the dead.’’ 


Who was this Being in whom purity overcame 
defilement; health, sickness; and life, death? 
What was the nature of him who stayed dissolu- 
tion, purified the poisoned spring and cured living 
death? Why does not Modernism, with all its 
boasted skill and professed superiority, bring 
forth from its ranks just one who can match this 
deed of the Christ? Can the combined and con- 
centrated wills of all their ‘‘enlightened minds’’ 
effect just one such cure? This man believed that 
Jesus had the power to make him clean. FT ortu- 
nately, for him the poisonous effluvia of Modern- 
ism had not weakened faith in a supernatural 
Jesus. 

There were speculative theories about Jesus 
when he lived, as there are now. The world had 
various views of him. They were not satisfactory 
to his heart because they were untrue to his na- 
ture. He supremely wished the understanding 
and loyalty of those closest to him. He pro- 
pounded the momentous question: ‘‘ Whom do ye 
say that I am?’’ Peter, ready spokesman of the 
Apostles, made the ever memorable reply: ‘‘ Thou 
art the Christ,’’ 8:29. Peter’s gospel does not 
mention the Master’s approval or promise to him. 
His modesty has left that for Matthew to record; 
but he will not omit his conception of Jesus as the 


ACCORDING TO MARK 43 


Messiah. How can Unitarians, who live nineteen 
hundred years after Jesus, better interpret his 
nature than Peter who knew him intimately in 
the flesh? 

In addition to the belief of the leper and Peter, 
consider, among the many witnesses which are 
found in Mark, one other,—the centurion. One 
loves to think of the centurions in the New Testa- 
ment. There are four; Julius, who treated Paul 
kindly, and saved his life, Acts 47; Cornelius, of 
admirable traits and saving faith, Acts 10; the 
one of Capernaum whose faith Jesus praised, 
Matt. 8:5-13; and the one who superintended the 
execution of Jesus, Mark 15: 39-46. His training 
in the severe and skeptical Roman army had 
hardened him. He had probably witnessed death, 
on the battle-field, in the amphitheater at Ces. 
area, in hot-headed insurrections in Palestine. 
Never had he witnessed such a death as this, a 
Voluntary Death for the salvation of sinners. He 
heard the strange cry and was thrilled through 
and through; he saw the dignified demeanor, the 
expression of a wondrous power of life and tri- 
umph in the hour and article of death; in the 
ecstasy of awe and wonder he glorified God; in 
strong conviction he said: ‘‘Truly this man was 
the Son of God.’’ This one was more than Roman 
heroes and demigods; he was the Son of God. 
‘“Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those 
of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those 
of a god; and the history of Socrates, which no 


44 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


one doubts, is not as well attested as that of 
Jesus.’’? (Rousseau). 

The Claims of Jesus. The householder de- 
manding fruit from his vineyard (12:1-12) is as 
strong a claim as one could make to Unique Son- 
ship. It is in the form of a parable, but it has 
no meaning unless Jesus was God’s one, well-be- 
loved Son who deserved reverence. The greatest 
sin is the rejection of Jesus; the doom of those 
who reject him is irretrievable. All this Jesus 
claimed for himself in the parable. 

Forgiveness of sins is the prerogative of God. 
Jesus claimed that right for himself and exercised 
it (2:1-12). Not even the Pope would say that 
in himself was such inherent power; he, and the 
priests, assert that it is a derived power. Jesus 
acts upon his own authority as God. 

The high priest put to Jesus the direct ques- 
tion: ‘‘Art thou the Christ, the Son of the 
blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see 
the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, 
and coming in the clouds of heaven,’’ 14: 61-62. 
There is the bold, inevitable claim! Jesus has at 
last openly declared himself the Messiah, the Son 
of God, the Son of man. He incriminated him- 
self by his open testimony. Caiaphas and the 
Jews understood his meaning and condemned him 
to be guilty of death. They would have secured 
no death sentence against him had he been only 
the Christ of the Modernists. Because Jesus tes- 
tified he was more than this, they crucified him. 


ACCORDING TO MARK 45 


He swore to his own hurt that he was the Son of 
God. Would any one, not mentally deranged, do 
so unless it was the very truth and he was ready 
to die for that truth? 

The Deeds of Jesus. There is in Mark an abun- 
dance of material pertaining to the deeds of Jesus. 
He was Master of mind and matter, of winds and 
waves, of disease and death. Consider two classes 
of Mark’s miracles; those of feeding the throngs 
and those of controlling the sea. He fed 5,000 
with five loaves and two fishes (6: 32-44), and 
4,000 with seven loaves and a few little fishes 
(8:1-9). It is well to emphasize the sympathy of 
Jesus for the poor, needy and hungry, but it is 
important also to emphasize his supernatural 
power to supply them. The sympathetic Jesus 
was the supernatural Jesus. God is the source of 
our food and Jesus is God. 

Jesus was never upon but one body of water, 
the sea of Galilee, and he mastered that. Cross- 
ing the sea in a boat with the disciples a storm 
swept down suddenly. Such storms are frequent. 
In 1909 I took a boat on the southeast coast of the 
lake. The wind was still and the water placid. 
Within fifteen minutes a squall was brewing and 
the boatman hurried to the shallow shore waters 
for safety. I understood how the tired Jesus had 
dropped off to sleep in the calm, and the storm 
had quickly frightened his disciples. The winds 
were tossing the waters in the boat and Jesus 
slept on. Jesus was a good sleeper. His 


46 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


conscience was clear, his nerves steady. The 
disciples, in excitement and fear, awoke him with 
a plea for help. He arose calmly and rebuked the 
wind as one does barking dogs; the dogs some- 
times continue to bark when we speak, but the 
wind ceased at his command. He spoke to the 
sea and the tempestuous waves lay down like 
timid lambs at his feet. There was a great calm. 
The disciples in amazement said one to another: 
‘‘What manner of man is this, that even the wind 
and the sea obey him?’’ 4: 41. 

That same sea became as pavement under his 
feet one dark and stormy night as he walked over 
its heaving bosom to his toiling disciples and 
comforted them with ‘‘It is I, be not afraid,’’ 6: 27. 
He is the ‘‘ Wondrous Sovereign of the Sea’’; he 
regained the supremacy which Adam lost and 
which no other has possessed; he is mightier than 
wind and waves, the forces and elements of na- 
ture are subject unto him. 

The only escape from the deity of Jesus is a 
denial of the miracles and a repudiation of the 
truthfulness of the records. We believe both. 
Our Savior can hear and answer the sinner’s 
agonizing cry and calm his tumultous passions be- 
cause he is the Lord over all. 


‘‘O Jesus, once rocked on the breast of the billow, 
Aroused by the shriek of despair from the pil- 
low; 
Now seated in glory, the poor sinner cherish 


ACCORDING TO MARK 47 


Who cries in his anguish, Save, Lord, or we 
perish. 


‘¢And, oh, when the whirlwind of passion is rag- 
ing, 
When sin in our hearts his wild warfare is wag- 


ing 
Then send down thy grace thy redeemed to cher- 


is 
Rebuke the destroyer. Save, Lord, or we per- 
ish.’? 


The Predictions of Jesus. On Tuesday of the 
last week of our Lord’s ministry he foretold the 
destruction of Jerusalem: ‘‘Seest thou these great 
buildings? There shall not be left here one stone 
upon another, which shall not be thrown down,”’ 
13:2. That prediction was fulfilled in the year 
70. Titus and his battering-rams destroyed the 
city. How did Jesus know what would come to 
pass? Again, later that week in Bethany, Mary 
anointed him, and he made the remarkable predic- 
tion: ‘‘Wheresoever the gospel shall be preached 
throughout the whole world, that also which this 
woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memo- 
rial of her,’’? 14:9. Put yourself in the historical 
situation and get the full force of those words. A 
man, soon to die, is in the home of three friends. 
One of them performs an act of devotion to him. 
Some complain at the woman’s waste and talk 
sanctimoniously about helping the poor. They 


48 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


profess to be interested in practical things. This 
man commends the woman, and announces that 
his gospel shall be preached everywhere and that 
this simple deed of this woman shall live in the 
universal preaching of that gospel. Behold, be- 
fore our twentieth century eyes, the fulfillment of 
that prophecy to the letter! 

The Resurrection of Jesus. Three times in 
Mark Jesus had plainly said he would rise from 
the dead, 9:36; 10:34; 14:28. Every time he 
foretold his death he coupled with it his resurrec- 
tion. His hearers did not understand him. It 
was hard enough to comprehend that their Lord 
should die; that he should rise again was beyond 
their comprehension. The women went to the 
tomb in the early morning expecting to find the 
dead body. They found the tomb empty and re- 
ceived the announcement: ‘‘He is risen; he is not 
here: behold the place where he lay,’’ 16:1-8. 
That is the most stupendous of miracles. It was 
a bodily resurrection. His body was gone. The 
women were invited to see for themselves. They 
saw and trembled and were amazed. Metaphys- 
ical dissertation about ‘‘a spiritual resurrection”’ 
cannot explain that empty tomb nor account for 
the body of Jesus. The risen body was the iden- 
tical body which Joseph and Nicodemus buried, 
only mortality had put on immortality. The 
physical body was glorified. 

The remaining verses in Mark, 16: 9-20, are not 
found in the Sinaitic and Vatican manuscripts. 


ACCORDING TO MARK 49 


However, they are quoted ‘‘by Ireneus and Hip- 
polytus in the second or third century,’’ a date 
earlier than the oldest manuscripts. Their con- 
tents are also corroborated by other gospels. We 
may treat them as Scripture. These are, then, 
accounts of the risen Christ as seen by Mary 
Magdalene (Vs. 9), by two as they walked (Vs. 
12), and by the eleven (Vs. 14). This is not a 
worked-up belief; not a myth invented by enthusi- 
astic followers; not a fraud palmed off upon 
eredulous disciples. The whole situation shows 
how reluctant the disciples were to accept the fact 
of the resurrection; how prone they were to dis- 
believe Mary and the two; how the Master ‘‘up- 
braided them with their unbelief and hardness of 
heart.’’ Those disciples were like the Modernists 
in one respect; they doubted the miracle. They 
were unlike them in other respects; they became 
fully convinced and were foremost in contending 
for this crowning miracle. 

The Authority of Jesus. The Master invited 
men to come with him and they straightway left 
their business, families and friends and compa- 
nied with him, 1: 16-20. He passed by the seat of 
custom and spoke two words to the Collector: 
‘‘Wollow me.’’ The official quit his post without 
formally resigning and followed Jesus, 2:12.” 
Abram’s call and obedience did not more strongly 
establish monotheism, than did the conduct of the 
fishermen and Matthew evidence the deity of 
Jesus. That they all had previous contact with 


50 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


him only strengthens the evidence. The govern- 
ment with all its authority could not secure more 
prompt action from men. No living man can so 
influence men to-day. Jesus, with no temporal 
power to support him, spoke and men heeded, and 
hazarded all. His invitation was more compelling 
than the imperious command of others. Men are 
accepting his invitations to-day and by their sal- 
vation and service are attesting his deity. 

Not only did Jesus invite men to come to him; 
he commanded them to go for him. ‘‘ And he said 
unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel to every creature. He that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that be- 
lheveth not shall be condemned,’’ 16:15f. The 
import of that command is tremendous. Jesus 
had no military organization, no material funds, 
no earthly office, but he orders like a king. The 
destiny of men hinges upon their treatment of 
his gospel. His orders were obeyed and his gos- 
pel was believed. This is an insoluble mystery 
upon any assumption other than that he was God. 
Men are now going with the gospel message into 
the dark places of the earth. They are men who 
have accepted the gracious invitation of the Di- 
vine Savior and have heard the authoritative 
voice of the Risen Savior. Those who deny his 
deity, or speculate about his person, are found 
in comfortable pulpits at home, not down among 
the depraved masses of darkest heathenism, en- 


ACCORDING TO MARK 51 


deavoring to reach and enlighten and save them 
by uplifting the cross on which the Prince of 
Glory died. 


‘‘Ve Christian heralds! go proclaim 
Salvation through Immanuel’s name; 
To distant climes the tidings bear, 
And plant the Rose of Sharon there.”’ 


III 
ACCORDING TO LUKE 


Luke was a scholar. His literary attainments 
were varied; his scientific culture was high. It is 
certain that he was the author of the third gos- 
pel. He wrote it before he did the Acts. Prob- 
ably the date of the book was A.D. 60 and the 
place of its writing Cesarea. 

Luke was not a Jew and, hence, was not look- 
ing for a Messiah. He was an educated Greek, a 
medical man, who disbelieved in heathen myths 
and abhorred the emperor-worship. He lived too 
near the time of Jesus to be imposed upon by 
legends and near enough to get the facts from 
eye-witnesses. 

This man set out seriously to write a history 
of Jesus. He studiously gathered the material, 
carefully arranged it and wrote it down accur- 
ately. The gospels by Mark and Matthew; the 
oral testimony of ministers, notably James, who 
were with Christ from the beginning of his min- 
istry; and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, are prob- 
ably sources used by Luke. In the introduction 
to his gospel he employed a word which means 
that he completed his research and sifted the evi- 
dence before he began to write and that he did 


it by constant application. He says his purpose 
52 


ACCORDING TO LUKE 53 


in writing was that his friend Theophilus might 
fully and clearly know, without tripping, the mat- 
ters about which he was writing. The most care- 
ful and polished introduction to any history is the 
first five verses of Luke’s gospel. Sir William 
Ramsay ranks Luke first among historians, even 
ahead of Thucydides. 

What one so competent and careful, so schol- 
arly and scientific, so orderly and accurate has to 
say upon the deity of Jesus should arrest the at- 
tention and provoke the thought of all serious 
persons. What does he say upon that subject? 

He says Jesus was born of a parthenos.. That 
is the one word in the original language for vir- 
gin. The Parthenon, the temple of the virgins, 
was derived from this word. It means a virgin 
and nothing else. It means a virgin even if mar- 
ried. In Mary’s case she was unmarried but be- 
trothed. Luke, in his genealogy of Jesus through 
Mary, guards his deity. He does not say he was 
the son of Joseph but implies that he was not in 
the words ‘‘as was supposed.’’ The Unitarians 
overlook that explanatory clause. He had al- 
ready shown that Jesus was not the real son of 
Joseph. 

It was naively suggested from a pulpit recently 
‘that with the discovery of older New Testament 
manuscripts the few verses which refer to the 
virgin-birth may be entirely eliminated.’’ Did 
not Luke know as much about the facts as any 
Modernist ever can find out by ‘‘discovery’’? 


o4 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


The Modernists, when they cannot disprove, ask 
you to assume a state of suspended judgment, to 
wait for what they hope may be found to discredit 
the history of Luke. The utmost they can present 
at present is ‘‘a very old Syriac manuscript”’ 
which, they claim, is older than the earliest manu-. 
seripts of the four gospels and which they cite 
to disprove Luke. But they neglect to say that 
that manuscript flatly contradicts itself, that it 
contains the two verses in Matthew 1: 18-20 which 
give the virgin birth. The ablest Greek scholar 
of my acquaintance says: ‘‘It is evident that some 
scribe, probably Ebionite or Cerinthian Gnostic, 
changed the text in Matthew 1:16 to get rid of 
the superhuman birth and deity of Jesus, but 
failed to alter 1:18-20.’? The New Testament 
cannot be handled as the Ebionites and Modern- 
ists handle it. It must be taken at its face value; 
it must be allowed to say what it says and to 
mean what it means; or else, it must be rejected 
in toto as untrustworthy. 

Luke says that John the Baptist should be filled 
with the Holy Spirit from his birth, but Jesus 
should be begotten of the Holy Spirit. John was 
born before his enduement by the Holy Spirit, 
but the humanity of Jesus was formed by the 
agency of the Holy Spirit. He calls Jesus and 
Adam both the Son of God, but while God created 
Adam he begot Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Adam 
was God’s offspring in the sense that all men are. 
Jesus was an incarnation of God. Luke calls the 


ACCORDING TO LUKE 55 


unborn child ‘‘holy,’’ free from all taint of sin, 
and the life of Jesus verified the prediction. 
Bruce well says: ‘‘A sinless man is as much a 
miracle in the moral world as a virgin birth is 
a miracle in the physical world.’’ Even the ene- 
mies of Jesus admit this moral miracle. On a 
priori ground there is no more rational way of 
accounting for it than that historically accredited 
to us by Luke, namely, by a virgin birth. 

Again, Luke states that Elizabeth greeted Mary, ~ 
before Jesus was born, as ‘‘the mother of my 
Lord.’’ The word for ‘‘Lord’’ is the one com- 
monly found in the Septuagint for Jehovah. Eliz- 
abeth knew the nature of the child and Luke knew 
the meaning of Greek. And Luke says the shep- 
herds heard the babe of Bethlehem described as 
‘a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.’’ What high 
dignity, even deity, is thus ascribed to the babe! 
Simeon’s revelation is in harmony with the an- 
nouncement to the shepherds; he should not die 
before he had seen ‘‘the Lord’s Christ.’’ 

At the age of twelve, Luke states, Jesus had a 
Messianic consciousness. He said to Mary and 
Joseph: ‘‘I must be in my Father’s house.’’ He 
expressed surprise that they did not understand. 
At his baptism and at the Transfiguration Luke 
records that God confirmed this peculiar relation 
of Jesus to himself—God called him his ‘‘beloved 
Son.”’ 

According to Luke, Jesus did not dispute the 
point raised by the Pharisees, viz: that none but 


56 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


God could forgive sins; but accepted the chal- 
lenge and exercised his authority to forgive sins 
and allowed them to conclude that he claimed 
that prerogative which belonged to God alone. 

Imke also records the supreme authority of 
Jesus over the Sabbath. That was a new idea to 
the Pharisees who enslaved men by the Sabbath. 
Jesus professed power to change the day, and 
history proves that he did so change it after his 
resurrection. 

On an occasion, Jesus, after a season of prayer, 
asked his disciples who the crowds said he was, 
Luke 9:18-22. They gave the current opinions: 
that he was John the Baptist, Elijah, or an old 
prophet come to life. Jesus put the inquiry to 
them personally. What was their personal opin- 
ion? Peter answered for himself and the others: 
‘“The Christ of God.’’ Thereupon, Jesus confided 
to them the intelligence of his approaching death 
and foretold that he would be raised up the third 
day. Peter confessed that Jesus was the Mes- 
siah, the same one whom Simeon saw and was 
ready to depart in peace. Jesus accepted Peter’s 
appellation. 

luke’s account of the return of the seventy 
tells of Jesus’ exultation in the Holy Spirit. In 
that moment he uttered words as strong as any 
found in John: ‘‘All things have been delivered 
unto me by my Father, and no one knows who the 
Son is except the Father and who the Father is 
except the Son and he to whom the Son wills to 


ACCORDING TO LUKE 57 


reveal him.’’ Mark you, it is not the theologian, 
but the historian, who writes this narrative. 
Jesus was a madman or he was the unique Son of 
God in whose will our destiny lies. 

Read the last paragraph in the twenty-second 
chapter of Luke. Jesus ‘is before the Sanhedrin 
the second time. In daylight he affirms what he 
had said at night. The Sanhedrin ratifies, by a 
second vote, its previous action. That action was 
that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, that 
such a claim was blasphemy, and that he should 
be put to death upon his own testimony. Jesus, 
then, was executed for his claim of deity. 

Turn now to the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke. 
There this man, who has given us a physician’s 
account of the wonderful birth, gives us a detailed 
account of something more wonderful and vital, 
the resurrection. This event refreshed forgetful 
minds, revived dying hope, confirmed faltering 
faith, and kindled waning enthusiasm. Jesus ap- 
peared again and again to his disciples. He ex- 
pounded from the Old Testament the things con- 
cerning himself, made himself unmistakably 
known, commanded them to evangelize among all 
nations, promised the enabling power of the Para- 
clete and went back where he was before the 
miraculous conception. ‘‘And they worshipped 
him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. 
And they were continually in the temple, praising 
and blessing God.’’ 

The Modernists’ world would be one without 


08 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


much religious joy. No praising God for victory 
over the tomb, but a lonely grave on which the 
pitying Syrian stars looked down. No happy 
Christmas time in celebration of the birth of the 
Prince of Peace, of Immanuel (God with us), but 
a cold and cheerless winter night. 


‘‘Tt is a lonely Christmas night, 
No angels singing in the height, 
No shepherds and no guiding light; 


‘‘No royal train to follow them 
With incense, myrrh, and diadem, 
No star-lit stall in Bethlehem: 


‘‘No Virgin Mother, undefiled, 
Holds to her heart her Holy Child; 
Not so can reason be beguiled. 


‘‘New science brings the world new light,— 
It seems so wise: it must be right,— 
But,—’tis a lonely Christmas night.’’ 


Luke, more justly renowned for scholarship 
than any of the Modernists, better informed about 
Jesus than any of the critics, gives us a Jesus 
who was not ‘‘the mere divinity of humanity’’ but 
God’s only begotten, His beloved, Son who 
snatched victory from the grave and ascended as 
miraculously as he descended. Luke’s Jesus is 
our Jesus,—the Jesus of devout scholarship and 
reverent science; the Jesus whose birth was an 
occasion of rejoicing and whose triumph over 


ACCORDING TO LUKE D9 


death is the source of perpetual rejoicing,—in 
life, death, and the hereafter. 


‘¢But now Thou art in the Shadowless Land, 
Behind the light of the setting sun; 
And the worst is forgotten which Evil planned, 
And the best which Love’s glory could win is 
won.’’ 


IV 
ACCORDING TO JOHN 


We are in the Holy of Holies of the New Tes- 
tament when we enter the gospel of John. It 
was written the last of the four, and near the 
close of the first century. Its author was one of 
the first two disciples to follow Jesus and the last 
of the apostles to die. He knew Jesus intimately 
from the beginning of his ministry. In the eve- 
ning of life he recalled the very hour of the day 
when he and Andrew first followed Jesus: ‘‘It 
was about the tenth hour,’’ 1:39. 

It is lamentably true that the gospel by the 
apostle of love has been the object of the most 
vehement attacks. Its authorship, date and doc- 
trine have all been fiercely assailed. Should any 
of my readers join arms with the assailants of 
this gospel he is respectfully referred to the tes- 
timony of Irenzeus, Tertullian, Clement, Theo- 
philus, Apollinaris, Polyecrates, Justin Martyr, 
and Ignatius, all of whom were familiar with the 
fourth gospel. ‘‘EKivery decade of the second cen- 
tury furnishes its share of proof that the four 
Gospels as a whole, and John in particular, were 
to the Church of that age what they are to the 
Church of the present’? (Liddon). ‘‘At this mo- 


ment the facts before us are such that no man 
60 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 61 


who does not will knowingly to choose error and 
to reject truth, can dare say that the fourth Gos- 
pel is not the work of the Apostle John’”’ (Ewald). 
We accept John’s authorship as proved and his 
pages as accurate. | 

John differs from the Synoptists in certain re- 
spects: 1. The scene of activity is mostly at Jeru- 
salem. 2. Events are grouped differently. 3. 
Matters are recorded which are not found else- 
where. The dialogues with Nicodemus and the 
woman of Samaria, the discourses at the Feast of 
Tabernacles, and the hallowed incidents of chap- 
ters fourteenth to seventeenth, are examples. 4. 
The thought is more philosophical and the con- 
nection more subtle. It is profound and yet ex- 
pressed in simple terms. 5. It is sometimes dif- 
ficult to distinguish whether Jesus, or the Bap- 
tist, or the author is speaking, 3:31-36. 6. The 
supernatural nature and mission of Jesus appear 
fully from the first. 7. It is supplemental to the 
Synoptics, contemplative in mood, interpretative 
in aim, and polemical in method. 

The author is not writing a biography of Jesus. 
Luke came nearer to that than any other. Yet, 
in truth, none of the gospels is so much a biogra- 
phy as the presentation of a Personality and his 
Saving mission. John expressly disclaims the 
completeness of his writings and in the same con- 
nection avows their purpose: ‘‘And many other 
signs daily did Jesus in the presence of his disci- 
ples, which are not written in this book: but these 


62 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye 
might have life through his name,’’ 20: 30f. We 
should expect, therefore, not to find in John many 
things recorded in the other gospels and to find 
especially that which leads to saving faith in 
Jesus as the Son of God. 

The Eternal Son. ‘‘In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. The same was in the beginning with 
God,’’? 1:1f. That antedates the first verse in the 
Bible. Genesis tells of an act done in the begin- 
ning; John tells of a Being existing in the begin- 
ning and, therefore, before the act of creation. 
Genesis refers to the first moment and event of 
time; John refers to the eternity which tran- 
scends time. Mark opens with the ‘‘beginning of 
the gospel,’’ which is the historical beginning of 
the public ministry of Jesus; John opens with his 
existence prior to all history and before the world 
was. Matthew and Luke record the miraculous 
entrance of Jesus into the world; John says that 
before that event he was. The Arians, in later 
times, held that there was a time when the Son 
was not; John says positively that he existed be- 
fore time. 

John’s Jesus was the preéxistent Logos—not 
the intermediate and impersonal logos of Philo, 
or simply the will of God manifested in action as 
the memra of the Targums, but rather the Son of 
God existing from eternity, distinct from the 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 63 


Father and equal to the Father. He was with 
God and was God. ‘‘The personification of the 
Divine Word in Philo is metaphysical, in the Old 
Testament poetical, in John historical’’ (Plum- 
mer). John opposed his personal experience of 
an eternally Divine Savior to the heresy of Cerin- 
thus who separated the man Jesus from the Aeon 
Christ. Cerinthus, as the Liberals of our time, 
contended that Jesus was not born of a virgin; 
that he was born naturally like a man; that the 
Aeon Christ descended upon him at his baptism 
and perfected the virtues of Jesus. John declared 
that Jesus was always God—after his birth, be- 
fore his birth, and even before the dawn of time. 
‘‘The Word is not merely a Divine Being, but He 
is in the absolute sense God’’ (Meyer). That is 
the essential difference between the Logos of John 
and the Logos of Philo, or the Christ of Liberal- 
ism. 

The Creative Agent. ‘‘All things were made 
through him; and without him was not anything 
made that was made,’’ 1:3. God created the uni- 
verse through the agency of the Son. By em- 
phatic repetition which contradicts the opposite, 
John declares that all things great and small 
throughout all space came into being through 
him. No inferiority is implied any more than 
where the same preposition is used of the Father 
‘‘through whom ye were called,’’ I Cor.1:9. Paul 
explicitly taught the creative agency and the con- 
tinuing activity of Christ. He and John say sub- 


64 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


stantially the same upon this phase of the sub- 
ject. 

The Revealing Personality. God is invisible. 
Man cannot see the divine essence with the phys- 
ical eye; should he see it he would die. Jesus 
revealed God to man. Philip asked to see God. 
Jesus responded: ‘‘He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father,’’ 14: 10. 

We can know of God’s existence from nature. 
This handiwork makes manifest his design and 
power. What of God’s nature? Does he love 
man? Nature does not say so in certain terms. 
Starvation and pestilence stalk across two hemi- 
spheres as these words are written. An earth- 
quake rocks Japan and the greatest catastrophe 
since the flood is the result. Nature is strong, 
but often heartless, sometimes cruel, always inex- 
orable. We must have other and fuller revelation 
of God. Where shall it be had? In John: ‘‘ And 
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, 
(and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth,’’ 
1:14. We feel the kindness and see the love of 
God in the incarnate Son. John goes on with the 
comforting revelation: ‘‘No man hath seen God 
at any time; the only begotten God (correct text 
W. & H.) who is in the bosom of the Father, he ~ 
hath declared him,’’? 1:18. Jesus revealed the 
heart of God. I know God is love because I know 
Jesus. He was the highest expression of love; 
‘‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 65 


only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting life,’’ 
3:16. Jesus possessed ‘‘the totality of the Di- 
vine attributes,’’ including love, righteousness, 
and truth. John stresses the most outstanding 
one, namely, love, which we had not known with- 
out Christ. 

The Indispensable One. There are things with- 
out which man cannot live and Jesus is and sup- 
plies every one of these. Observe how John 
brings this before us. 

1. Life. When life is extinct man is dead. 
Christ is the source of all life, physical and spir- 
itual: ‘‘In him was life.’’ 

2. Light. Think what would happen to the 
world were the sun to go out forever, or for a 
year. Shut the eye from the light for a length 
of time and the sight is lost. Light is essential to 
the material earth and to the bodily eye. Christ 
is to the intellect and conscience what light is to 
the earth and eye. ‘‘The life was the light of 
men,’’—intellectual and moral light. Christ not 
merely dwells in light, he is Light in essence, 
thought and action. He is the religious light 
which illumines the moral darkness. This is a 
truth oft repeated by John: ‘‘I am the light of 
the world,’’ 8:12; ‘‘As long as I am in the world, 
I am the light of the world,’’ 9:5; ‘‘That was the 
true light, which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world,’’ 1:9; ‘‘And this is the condemna- 
tion, that light is come into the world, and men 


66 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


loved darkness rather than light, because their 
deeds were evil,’’ 3:19. 

3d. Bread. The most universal food is bread. 
In some form it is eaten everywhere. We call it 
the staff of life. Jesus said of himself: ‘‘I am 
the bread of life,’? 6:23. The Synoptists relate 
the miracle of feeding the five thousand. John 
alone relates the spiritual interpretation of that 
miracle in the Master’s profound discourse on the 
bread of life. It is the food which endureth, 
which a man may eat and not die, the living bread 
which came down from heaven, the flesh of Christ 
which he would give for the world and which a 
man must eat to have eternal life. Necessarily, 
this eating is not literal but spiritual. This is not 
my arbitrary or accommodating interpretation. 
That which is literal must be taken as such no 
matter how hard it may be. In this instance, how- 
ever, the Master has instructed us that he spoke 
figuratively. ‘‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; 
the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak 
unto you, they are spirit and they are life,’’ 6: 64. 
It is contrary to the Master’s own teaching to 
take the words about eating his flesh and drink- 
ing his blood literally, as Martin Luther did, in- 
stead of taking them symbolically. 

4. Water. One can exist without food longer 
than he can without water. The value of water 
may be implied in the fact that two thirds of the 
earth’s surface is covered by water. One who 
has lived in an arid country appreciates the in- 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 67 


dispensableness of water. I was born and grew 
to manhood in a state where streams were scarce 
and droughts frequent. Though I now live in a 
state of abundant water I sometimes have hor- 
rible dreams of a drought; the cisterns are ex- 
hausted, the wells fail, the creeks and springs dry 
up, the grass withers, the corn fires, and for 
monotonous months there is no rain. People al- 
most famish; cattle moan piteously and stretch 
out on the plains with swollen tongues and dis- 
tended eyes and die the most horrible of deaths— 
of thirst. Sometimes I dream that I am riding 
horseback on a long, sandy road, through piney 
woods, or across vast prairies where there are 
no dwellings or streams. My lips are parched, 
my tongue is paper, my saliva is cotton. These 
dreams come back from the observations and ex- 
periences of boyhood. Oh, how terrible to be with- 
out water! How sweet and refreshing when 
thirsty lips taste water! 

‘Tf any man thirst, let him come unto me and 
drink,’’ cried Jesus on that last day of the feast, 
7:37. ‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I 
shall give him shall never thirst,’’ said Jesus to 
the woman at the well, 4:14. He was in himself 
what the thirsty soul craved; he gave the satis- 
fying and saving draught. He said that the soul 
which came to him had two experiences: (1) the 
soul thirst was quenched, and (2) that soul in 
turn became a fountain from which life-giving 
streams flowed. The second was the issue of the 


68 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


first and was expected always to follow; when 
Jesus spoke of the first he connected with it the 
second. Millions have, by personal experience, 
tested the Lord’s promise and found it precious. 
This alone attests the deity of Jesus. Men have 
felt and know. 

‘Accredited by Four Witnesses. The biblical 
rule of evidence required two witnesses (Num. 
30:30; Deut. 17:6). Jesus advanced his marvel- 
ous claims upon the Jews who denied them. They 
would say that his testimony must be corrob- 
orated. He cited four confirming and corroborat- 
ing witnesses. 

1. The Baptist, ‘‘Ye sent unto John and he 
bore witness of the truth,’’ 5:33. Just precisely 
what was John the Baptist’s witness? It was di- 
rect and positive: ‘‘I saw, and bare record that 
this is the Son of God,’’? 1:34. What one sees with 
his own eyes is the best kind of testimony. John 
the apostle, in his first epistle, said he had seen 
with his eyes the ‘‘Word of Life’’ and felt with 
his hands. John the Baptist was promised a des- 
ignating sign. The promise was fulfilled and he 
declared that the One he baptized was the Son 
of God. Previously, John had disclaimed being 
the Messiah and subsequently he reiterated his 
disclaimer and reaffirmed his positive declaration 
that Jesus was the Christ, 3: 28-30. 

2. The works. ‘‘The same works that I do 
bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me,” 
0:36. If men hesitated to believe him, Jesus ap- 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 69 


pealed to his works: ‘‘ Believe the works,’’ 10: 38. 
Judged by his deeds Jesus was superhuman. The 
Modernists hold that the miracles are a stumbling- 
block to faith; Jesus said they were an argument 
for faith. The Modernists would eliminate the 
miraculous from the Gospels in order to make 
their acceptance easier, but they would not then 
be worth accepting for the moral character of 
Jesus would be imperilled by destroying his verac- 
ity, the Evangelists would be discredited as wit- 
nesses, the death of Jesus would mark the great- 
est failure of history, and mankind would stagger 
and fall and despair under the hopeless burden 
of unremovable sin. The works of Christ evi- 
denced his supernatural nature. ‘‘Believe me 
that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: 
or else believe me for the very works’ sake.’’ 
John 14:11. 

3. The Father. Among humans, the one who 
knows most certainly a son’s father is his mother. 
In the case of Jesus the one who best knew his 
father was the Father, God. Joseph made no 
claims. On the contrary, he said the child was 
not his. Mary did not understand him, but God 
knew and audibly declared three times that Jesus 
was His unique Son. Our Savior falls back on 
the Father’s testimony: ‘‘The Father himself, 
which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me,’’ 
9:37. 

4. The Scriptures. The Jews had the Old Tes- 
tament in their possession when Jesus came. 


70 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


They had cumbered it with tradition, to be sure, 
but behind all their literature and theology were 
these sacred writings. They read them, mem- 
orized them, quoted them. Jesus appealed to 
these for his credentials: ‘‘Ye search the scrip- 
tures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: — 
and they are they which testify of me... . For 
had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed 
me: for he wrote of me,’’ 5:39, 46. The deity of 
Jesus was latent in the Old Testament; it is pat- 
ent in the Gospels. It is seen in full splendor in 
John’s Gospel from the opening to the closing 
words. 

The Bold Assertions. The Liberals are fond 
of saying that Jesus did not profess to be the Son 
of God in contradistinction to the sonship other 
men have through creation; and, also, that there 
was no original Messianic consciousness in Jesus, 
but he accepted the title late in his ministry and 
‘‘avainst his will.’’? This theory has no support 
in the gospel of John. Early in his ministry oe- 
curred the conversation with the woman of 
Sychar. Then and there Jesus avowed that he 
was the Messiah: ‘‘I that speak unto thee am 
he,’’? 1:26. The woman was convinced and im- 
mediately heralded the marvelous understanding 
of the Christ. The historical truth is that Jesus 
was conscious of his Messianic mission when he 
began to preach, and John the Baptist and John 
the Apostle confirm his early claims. 

At the feast of dedication the Jews pretended 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 71 


to be very desirous of knowing if Jesus were the 
Christ and asked to be told plainly. Jesus re- 
plied: ‘‘I told you, and ye believed not.... I 
and my Father are one,’’ 10: 22-30. They were 
furious at his words and took up stones to stone 
him. Men may still throw stones at the deity of 
Jesus, even from pulpits, colleges, and semi- 
naries, but they cannot knock down those potent 
words: ‘‘I and my Father are one.’’ He here 
asserts that they are one substance. The Mod- 
ernists’ theory that this scripture means that 
Jesus and God were merely one in moral agree- 
ment is disproven by the text and the context. 
The Jews stone him for making himself God, 
which they would not have done had he asserted 
no more than unity of will. Furthermore, Christ 
does not correct them, but bears the blame. As- 
suredly, he would have corrected them had their 
animosity arisen out of a gross misapprehension 
of his words. An insuperable objection to the re- 
constructed human Jesus of Modernism is that 
he is not historical; the Jesus of the New Testa- 
ment sources is equal with God—there is no his- 
torical data for another Jesus, that is, for a Jesus 
who was not as truly God as he was man. 

In that profound discourse (8: 12-59) Jesus as- 
serted (1) that if the Jews had known him they 
should have known God, (2) that they were of this 
world, but he was not of this world, (3) that they 
were of their father, the devil, but he proceeded 
forth and came from God, and (4) that he was 


12 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the great I AM. Tested by Jesus’ words, that 
unless men believed in him they should die in 
their sins, what becomes of universal salvation? 
Tested by Jesus’ words, that some were the chil- 
dren of the devil, what becomes of universal fa- 
therhood? Tested by Jesus’ thrice repeated words 
(24, 28, 59), that he was preéxistent, what be- 
comes of the Jesus of Liberalism? Every Jew 
understood the significance of the great name, I 
AM; it meant Jehovah, who thus denominated 
himself to Moses, Ex. 3:14. Cf. Deut. 32:39; Isa. 
43:10. In consequence of his taking to himself 
this Divine Name the Jews prepared to stone 
Jesus for blasphemy. The Unitarians allege that 
the orthodox people killed Jesus. It would be 
more accurate to say that the Unitarians killed 
him, killed him because he claimed to be God. 

It was an impressive scene when Christ stood 
before the Roman Governor, Pilate, and was 
questioned by him. In very fact the prisoner was 
passing sentence on the judge and announcing 
principles as fundamental and abiding in Chris- 
tianity as were the decisions of John Marshall in 
American jurisprudence. Pilate, a tone of scorn 
in his voice, said to Christ: ‘‘Are you the King of 
the Jews?’’ In Pilate’s sense he was not King; 
in another sense he was. With a strong emphasis 
on the personal pronoun, ‘‘my,’’ Christ declared 
that his kingdom did not have its foundation, its 
origin, in this world and did not draw its power 
.therefrom. Pilate, with a disdainful air, rejoined: 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 73 


‘‘So then you are a king.’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ said Jesus, 
‘‘vou say truly that I am a king. For this pur- 
pose I was born, and for this purpose I have come 
into the world—to give testimony for the truth,’’ 
19:37 (Weymouth). Moffatt’s translation also 
brings out the force of the Greek: ‘‘Certainly I 
am aking. This is why I was born, this is why 
I came into the world, to bear testimony to the 
truth. Every one who belongs to the truth lis- 
tens to my voice.’’ The verbs used by Jesus, 
‘“was born’’ and ‘‘came,’’ are perfects, and ex- 
press a past event which continues in its effects; 
they point backward to his previous existence 
with the Father and prepare for his earthly mis- 
sion of supporting the Truth; their subject, the 
pronoun ‘‘I,’’ is very emphatic. This sentence of 
Jesus places him in a solitary position among 
men; there was none like him before or since. 

It is interesting to compare the assertion of 
Christ before the high priest (Matt. 26:24) with 
the assertion before the Roman Governor. The 
first is to the Jews and in the language of proph- 
ecy; the second is to a Roman and is in the lan- 
guage of conscience; the first predicts a manifes- 
tation of glory in the future; the second affirms 
a manifestation of truth in the present; each as- 
sertion is appropriate to the evoking circum- 
stances. Christ confessed to Pilate that he pre- 
existed, and that he came into the world to be 
the head of the spiritual kingdom, and to give 
objective expression to the truth. John was on 


74 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the scene and has described the dignified bearing 
of the Savior and informed us of his bold asser- 
tions made in the calmest manner. 


‘‘No mortal can with him compare 
Among the sons of men.’’ 


The Human Ascriptions. The first of these 
ascriptions which I cite is related to the subject 
just discussed; it involved a claim of Jesus for 
himself in the estimation in which others held 
him. ‘‘Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say 
well; for so I am,’’ 18:13. The Liberalists rejoin 
that this is nothing more than the ordinary title 
of respect paid to a rabbi. It is hardly possible 
that the words did not have a deeper meaning 
upon the lips of the disciples; they assuredly 
mean far more in the thought of Jesus. However, 
I will not stay to argue about this text with the 
Liberalists. I will ask them to consider and ex- 
plain another human ascription to Jesus, the one 
by Thomas: ‘‘My Lord and my God,’’ 20: 28. 

Thomas’ words echo the first verse of John and 
anticipate the purpose of the book as announced 
near the close, 20:31. They are not an exclama- 
tion of astonishment addressed to God. They are 
undoubtedly addressed to Christ as is evident not 
only from the preceding ‘‘unto him’’ but also 
from Christ’s reply. They are not the confes- 
sion of a credulous man. It was hard for Thomas 
to believe the reports he heard of the resurrection 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 75 


of Jesus; he said he would not believe without 
irrefutable proof. He was not an unbeliever,— 
he had followed Jesus three years; he was not a 
doubter from indifference (as Pilate), still less 
from hostility to the truth. He loved truth; 
though sincerely perplexed, he was anxious and 
ready to believe the truth; but his understanding 
demanded evidence. As soon as the evidence was 
presented he embraced it with joy and uttered 
that strong confession of faith in the Lordship 
and Deity of Christ. The Unitarian view cannot 
be squared with Thomas’ confession or Christ’s 
acceptance and approval of that confession. 
Thomas is an encouraging example for Rational- 
ists, in the best sense of the term. The honest 
doubter who seeks the truth in the New Testa- 
ment will find it and be blessed. I would not 
quarrel with him who is skeptical and sad because 
he is so. I would commend to him Thomas as a 
precedent and counsel him to 


‘“‘Wicht his doubts, and gather strength 
To find a stronger faith his own.’’ 


Still, there is a higher faith than that which 
has fought doubt and reached certainty from see- 
ing and weighing evidence; it is the faith which 
believes without questioning, which holds fast the 
invisible as seeing him, which clings to Christ as 
the trusting child to a mother ‘‘with undoubting, 
implicit, unbounded trust and confidence.’’ Christ 


76 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


said as much: ‘‘Thomas, because thou hast seen 
me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have 
not seen, and yet have believed,’’ 20: 29. 

The Atoning Savior and Risen Lord. If the 
eternal Sonship and Messianic consciousness of 
Christ are evident in the gospel of John from the 
first, no less so is the fact of his sacrificial death. 
On successive days the Baptist pointed out Jesus 
as the ‘‘Lamb of God,’’? 1:29, 36. The Lamb of 
Isaiah fifty-three was directly in John’s thought 
and, indirectly, the Paschal Lamb. Christ was to 
be slain like the innocent lamb as a means of tak- 
ing away the sin of the world. He had just sym- 
bolized his death, burial, and resurrection by re- 
quiring baptism of John; the Baptist did not un- 
derstand why Jesus should be baptized, but the 
very next sermon he preached after that baptism 
was on the text, ‘‘ Behold the Lamb of God, which 
taketh away the sin of the world.’’ At the first 
Passover Jesus predicted his death: ‘‘ Destroy 
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,”’ 
2:19. John probably heard him and explained 
that he spoke of the temple of his body; that the 
disciples recollected the Master’s words after- 
wards; that their fulfillment confirmed the faith 
of the disciples in the Old Testament and the 
word Jesus spoke. Only a disciple could give 
these details about the disciples’ thoughts. A lit- 
tle later Jesus informed Nicodemus that the Son 
of man must die that men might not perish, 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 77 


3:14f. Be it noted that all of this was early in 
the ministry of Jesus. 

At the feast of tabernacles Christ anticipated 
his death and ascension: ‘‘ Yet a little while am I 
with you, and then I go unto him that sent me,”’’ 
7:33. ‘The discourse on the Good Shepherd, 
chapter ten, contains very strong evidence of the 
deity of Christ. The figure of speech is an ex- 
tended metaphor, as is the discourse on the vine 
and the branches, chapter fifteen. John has no 
parables. These two chapters are the nearest re- 
semblances to parables, yet in them the figure and 
its application are interwoven. They have been 
called allegories; if so they are the only instances 
in the Gospels. Whether the figure of the Good 
Shepherd be an allegory or a metaphor the teach- 
ing is positive that Jesus was the Good Shepherd 
who voluntarily laid down his life for the sheep: 
‘‘T lay down my life for the sheep. ...I lay 
down my life, that I might take it again. No man 
taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. 
I have power to lay it down, and I have power 
to take it again.’’ 

The Greeks came to see Jesus. In them he 
seemed to have glimpsed the coming to him of the 
Gentile world. But he remembers instantly that 
this can only come through his death. The corn 
of wheat must die before the Gentile harvest. He 
explained the figure of the corn of wheat by an- 
other figure which prefigured his death. ‘‘And I, 


78 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men 
unto me,’’? 12:32. The large space devoted to the 
death of Jesus in the fourth gospel indicates its 
importance in the thought of Jesus, and also of 
John. He has expounded the theology of that 
death in his first letter. To deal with that is apart 
from the purpose of this discussion which is con- 
fined to the Gospel. But in passing, we may men- 
tion: ‘‘The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleans- 
eth us from all sin,’’ I John 1:7; and, ‘‘Herein 
is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved 
us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our 
sins,’’ I John 4:10. Redemption through the 
death of Christ is the central truth of Christian- 
ity. Around it all others revolve. Christianity 
was created by Christ. It got its idea of the cen- 
trality of the cross from the Gospels, and espe- 
cially from John. Across the pathway of John’s 
Christ the shadow of the cross fell from the time 
of baptism, continuing until it deepened into the 
three hours’ blackness of darkness. 

John informs us that every time Jesus spoke of 
his approaching death he predicted his resurrec- 
tion. Had Jesus been mistaken, his intellectual 
strength and moral beauty would be seriously im- 
paired and his claim to deity shattered. That he 
was not mistaken is demonstrated by John in the 
last two chapters of his Gospel. The risen Christ 
appeared to Mary, to the ten disciples, to the 
eleven and to the seven. These four appearances, 
under the circumstances narrated, are convincing 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 79 


that the same Jesus whose tender voice had been 
heard in forgiving the Magdalene, whose benedic- 
tion of peace had been bestowed upon his disci- 
ples, whose sinless body had been torn by nails 
and spear, and whose authoritative tones had de- 
manded supreme service, was alive and recogniz- 
able by those who had known him in the flesh. 
Their disinclination to believe is a presumption 
against fraud; their assurance of the resurrection 
by the evidence vouchsafed them is a guarantee 
to us of the truthfulness of the account; and the 
cost they paid for witnessing to the resurrection 
of Christ is a historical fact which cannot be dis- 
puted. All of this is in the record of John, ‘‘that 
disciple whom Jesus loved,’’ who says he was 
present on three occasions when the risen Lord 
appeared. Plato was not present the day Socrates 
had his final talk with his friends. Yet he is the 
authority for what Socrates said. There is better 
reason for accepting the personal witness of John 
than there is for accepting the Phedo. It is 
more difficult to reject the resurrection, in the 
light of all the evidence, than it is to believe that 
the Christ of John rose from the dead. This is 
the only tenable position for one who accepts the 
Gospels. Even more, it will be the inevitable con- 
clusion of any one who will, without prejudice, ex- 
amine the matter by the same rules of evidence 
which men apply to other matters of fact. 

The Object of Faith. Uiberalism expatiates 
upon Jesus as the acme of perfection for which 


80 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


man is to strive and the exemplar of faith which 
man is to imitate. It teaches that man should live 
as Christ lived and believe in God as he believed. 
But, universal experience teaches that man can- 
not live sinlessly and that his faith is faulty. Man 
can neither live sinlessly as Jesus did, nor know 
God intimately and trust him implicitly as did 
Jesus. Hume’s dictum, that a miracle is contrary 
to all human experience, is not half so forceful 
against the miracles, for many people in the Bible 
experienced miracles, as it is against the Liber- 
alists’ position that man must live and believe 
like Jesus, for no man, in the Bible or elsewhere, 
has done so. From all human experience Liberal- 
ism cannot cite one such case. It cannot even cite 
Jesus, for there is no historic data that the Jesus 
of Liberalism ever lived. John did not know him. 
The Christ of John is the sinless One who died 
for sinners,—not as an example but as a propitia- 
tion. The Christ of John is the object of faith,— 
not an example of how men should have faith in 
God. Jesus never said, ‘‘Believe in God as I be- 
lieve in him’’; he did say, ‘‘Ye believe in God, be- 
lieve also in me.’’ John 14:1. Instead of saying 
that men should believe in God as he believed in 
God, Jesus said that men should believe in him as 
they believed in God. 

This distinction between the Gospels and Uni- 
tarianism is so vital that we may dwell upon it 
for amoment. The point is that Jesus presented 
himself as the one whom men should trust as 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 81 


Savior and Lord. John makes that as plain as 
a-b-e. ‘‘He that believeth on the Son hath ever- 
lasting life: and he that believeth not the Son 
shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth 
on him.’’ John 3:36. Never mind whether these 
are the words of Jesus or his Apostle, there they 
are! They affirm that ‘‘he that believeth on the 
Son,’’ not believeth in God like the Son; ‘‘hath,’’ 
not shall have, ‘‘eternal life,’’—a phrase found 
seventeen times in John. John never, either in his 
Gospel or Epistles, applies eternal to anything 
but ‘‘life.’’ 

Clearly, Jesus is speaking in 11: 25: ‘‘T am the 
resurrection and the life.’’ He shows how he is 
the Resurrection; he who believes in me, even if 
he had died (physically) shall live eternally. He 
shows how he is the Life; every one who is living 
and is a believer in me shall never die (eternally). 
In either instance, or both, he presents himself as 
the object of faith. Is he a credible and worthy 
object? The context answers that inquiry satis- 
factorily. 

The setting is the death of Lazarus. The rais- 
ing of the dead is different from other miracles. 
Kach miracle required divine power, but the evi- 
dence of that power’s operation is clearest in 
cases where the dead were raised. We may not 
draw sharp lines between sickness and health, 
nor deny that storms and calms alternate; but 
there is no resemblance in nature to the raising 
of the dead,—that is one thing nature has never 


82 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


done. Jesus did it three times. John has pre- 
served at length the most notable case,—the rais- 
ing of a man four days dead and in a state of 
decomposition. The Christ who performed that 
miracle is indeed the Resurrection and the Life, 
worthy of all trust and sufficient for every emer- 
gency. When he bids us believe in him as we 
believe in God our intellects incline us and our 
hearts prompt us to obey. 

Jesus was perfectly sure of the reality of a 
life after death and that he was the source of 
that life. How vastly different from the noblest 
teacher, the profoundest philosopher, of classie 
Greece! Socrates made his way out of the fog 
and confusion of polytheism into the sunlight and 
order of monotheism. He did not, however, ar- 
rive at a conviction of certainty about immortal- 
ity. The day he drank the hemlock, he talked long 
and interestingly with Hermogenes, Apollodorus, 
Critobulus, -AUschines, Ctesippus, Menexenus, 
Epigines, Antisthenes, and others about immor- 
tality. He said: ‘‘To affirm confidently that these 
things are as I have narrated, is not proper for a 
man that has judgment (sense); that, however, 
this is true, or something like this, with regard to 
our souls and their dwelling places, if (since) the 
soul appears to be immortal, it seems to me, who 
thinks that this is so, proper and worth while to 
make this adventure, for the adventure is excel- 
lent (noble).’? (Plato’s Phedo,  Ilsxiii, first 


ACCORDING TO JOHN 83 


lines.) This is the highest point to which phi- 
losophy climbed before Christ. 

Turn to the fourteenth of John and read the 
words of Jesus to his disciples. They were 
spoken under circumstances similar to those in 
which Socrates uttered the words just quoted. 
Ah, but what a difference! Christ is certain 
where Socrates was, at most, hopeful; ‘‘In my 
Father’s house are many mansions: if it were 
not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a 
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place 
for you, I will come again, and receive you unto 
myself; that where I am there ye may be also.”’ 
Christ did not declare his teaching to be the Way 
of Life, as a recent Modernist author alleges. He 
declared himself to be that way: ‘‘I am the way, 
the truth, and the life.’? Blessed words of the 
Master! They have strengthened the weak, 
guided the perplexed, comforted the sorrowing 
and saved the lost, through past centuries. They 
are the satisfaction and stay of millions of rev- 
erent hearts this very hour. Jesus is the way 
by which we go, the truth by which we know, the 
life by which we live. O man, walk that way to 
glory, know that ultimate truth, receive that life 
everlasting! They are to be had by accepting 
Christ. ‘‘As many as received him, to them gave 
he authority to become the sons of God, even to 
them that believe on his name,’’? 1:12. Reader, 
you were born with a capacity for becoming a son 


84 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


of God. Christ is from all eternity the Son of 
God. You are empowered to become a son of 
God, you have the right, the authority, of a son 
of God the moment you voluntarily accept Christ. 
Would you know and feel the preciousness and 
power of this? Then test it and you shall. ‘‘If 
any man will do his will he shall know of the doc- 
tVING ye 


a 
ACCORDING TO PAUL 


Paul was the ablest Christian of the New Tes- 
tament. To his strong native intellect was added 
the best education of the times. The fields of 
poetry, philology, philosophy and religion were 
familiar to him. An ardent nature impelled him 
to do whole-heartedly whatever he undertook. 
Sincerity was one of his resplendent virtues. 
Able, ardent, and sincere, he was Christianity’s 
greatest trophy in the first century, probably in 
nineteen centuries. He was the clearest inter- 
preter of Jesus Christ, the profoundest advocate 
of the doctrine of salvation. 

The largest contributor to the New Testament 
Canon, directly and indirectly, is Paul. Most of 
the Acts, by Luke, is devoted to him, and he is the 
author of at least thirteen epistles. Among the 
earliest Christian documents extant are some of 
Paul’s letters. Harnock dates Thessalonians, his 
first epistles, 48-49, and Ramsay dates these two 
books 51-52, and it may be that Galatians ante- 
dates these. 

Saul of Tarsus was the arch enemy of Chris- 
tianity. Stephen had been stoned with his ap- 
proval, probably by his vote. Like a wolf in a 


flock he had scattered the first church. His fiery 
85 


86 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


zeal knew no bounds. He would pursue the Chris- 
tians, both men and women, to Damascus and ar- 
rest and bind and bring them to Jerusalem. Here 
was no doubting skeptic like Thomas; rather was 
he a violent hater, a determined destroyer. His 
hostility was hot, but honest. He thought he was 
doing God’s service in stamping out the heresy 
of the Nazarene. 

The most sudden and surprising event in the 
New Testament happened to Saul on the Damas- 
cus road. That event is of such importance that 
it is related four times: by Luke, Acts 9; by Paul 
to the Jews, Acts 22; by Paul to Agrippa, Acts 
26; and by Paul to the Galatians, 1-2. There are 
slight variations, such as a reasonable reader 
would expect, but the essential facts are substan- 
tiated. A light shone upon him, a voice spoke 
unto him, he inquired who it was, he was in- 
formed that it was Jesus, and trembling and as- 
tonished he said: ‘‘Lord, what shall I do?’’ That 
moment Saul’s career of persecution ended, and 
his life of obedience to Jesus began. A radical 
change, a violent revulsion, occurred in Saul’s 
whole nature. This is beyond dispute. 

It must of necessity be, that the person attest- 
ing this experience of himself, and of whom it is 
related by another authentic historian, was either 
deceived, or was a deceiver, or what he declared 
to have been the cause of his conversion and to 
have happened in consequence of it, did really 
happen. 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 87 


As to his being deceived; Who was there to de- 
ceive him? It was morally impossible for the 
disciples to conceive the idea and devise the plan 
of turning, by fraud, this persecutor into an apos- 
tle at the period of his fiercest fury against the 
Lord. But, could they have been so extravagant 
as to conceive such a thought, it was physically 
impossible for them to execute it, in the manner 
in which the conversion is described. How could 
those fleeing disciples produce a light which at 
midday was brighter than that of the sun? How 
could they make Saul hear and understand words 
which others of the company heard but did not 
understand? How could they make him blind for 
three days and then make scales fall from his 
eyes? Why, the disciples were astonished at 
Saul’s change. They not only did not fraudu- 
lently contrive to bring it about, they were as- 
tonished when it transpired and Ananias and 
other Christians were reluctant to believe its 
truthfulness. The situation was similar to that 
one after the resurrection of Jesus—the disciples 
were neither looking for it, nor quick to believe 
it as a fact. Beyond controversy, no fraud was, 
or could have been, practiced on Saul that mo- 
mentous day on the road. Much less still, could 
the deceit of others produce those results subse- 
quent to that experience, results beneficent and 
bountiful, sacrificial and sustained. 

As to being a deceiver; What was his motive? 
There could have been no rational motive to un- 


88 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


dertake an imposture, nor could it have possibly 
succeeded by the means we know he employed. 
What was the inducement to Saul to palm off an 
imposture? Surely not the hope of advancing 
himself. The revelation through Ananias de- 
clared how great things he should suffer. Reflect 
upon what it cost Saul to be a Christian and the 
motive of self-interest is eliminated as a possi- 
bility. He forfeited his fortune, lost his reputa- 
tion, incurred the enmity of his friends, risked 
family alienation and abandoned his religion, all 
for Christ. He then began a life of poverty and 
peril, homelessness and hazard, danger and death, 
and he shrank not even to the bloody end. 

The state of Christianity when Saul espoused 
it, disproves the hypothesis that he was an im- 
poster seeking fame and fortune. He left the 
disposers of wealth, dignity, office, and power; he 
allied himself with the indigent, the hated and the 
oppressed. He embraced a sect whose leader had 
been condemned as a criminal and died on a cross 
between two thieves; whose doctrines were repudi- 
ated by the wisest of the Greeks and the highest 
of the Jews; and whose members were under com- 
mon contempt. With them he was made ‘‘as the 
filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things,”’ 
I Cor. 4:12, 

His behavior ever afterwards also disproves 
deception. He tells the Corinthians: ‘‘Even unto 
this present hour we both hunger and thirst; and 
are naked, and are buffetted, and have no certain 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 89 


dwelling-place, and labor, working with our own 
hands,’’? I Cor. 4:11. To the Thessalonians he 
says: ‘‘Hor ye remember, brethren, our labor and 
travail: for laboring night and day, because we 
would not be chargeable unto any of you, we 
preached unto you the Gospel of God,’’ I Thess. 
2:9. In his farewell address to the Ephesian el- 
ders he says: ‘‘I have coveted no man’s silver, or 
gold, or apparel. Yea, you yourselves know, that 
these hands have ministered unto my necessities, 
and to them that were with me,’’ Acts 20:33 f. 
Such insinuations of deception and insincerity are 
not new. They were made by his enemies then, 
and the passages quoted are just samples of 
whole chapters in which Paul indignantly brands 
them as false. The disinterested devotion of Paul 
to Christ is so luminous that even the blind can 
see it. 

The conclusion is fairly and undeniably drawn, 
that what is related to have been the cause of 
Paul’s conversion and to have happened in conse- 
quence of it, did actually happen. I have dwelt 
upon this event because it is the most stupendous 
since the resurrection of Christ. In fact, the con- 
version of Saul proves the resurrection and con- 
firms the Christian religion as a divine revelation. 
Lord Lyttleton and Gilbert West, Esq., both men 
of acknowledged talents, but with a superficial 
knowledge and skeptical view of the Scriptures, 
met and determined to expose Christianity as a 
cheat. Lord Lyttleton chose the Conversion of 


90 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Paul, and Mr. West the Resurrection of Christ 
for the subjects of hostile criticism. Both began 
their respective tasks full of prejudice; but the 
result of their efforts to overthrow Christianity 
was their conversion. After their investigation, 
they came together, ‘‘not as they expected, to ex- 
ult over an imposture exposed to ridicule, but to 
lament over their own folly and to felicitate each 
other on their joint conviction that the Bible was 
the Word of God.’’ Lord Lyttleton says in his 
able treatise: ‘‘J thought the conversion and the 
apostleship of Paul alone, duly considered, was 
of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Chris- 
tianity to be a divine revelation.’’ 

Paul had clear and decided views of Jesus. All 
his works and words are upon the pre-supposition 
that Jesus was more than man. He states facts 
which cannot be explained except upon the hy- 
pothesis of unique sonship. He interprets his 
personal experience of Jesus. According to Sa- 
batier, this is the most satisfactory test of truth; 
that which appeals to one’s own consciousness. 
Paul may never have seen Jesus in the flesh. 
Nevertheless, he saw him. They met face to face 
on the Damascus road: ‘‘ He was seen of me also,’’ 
I Cor. 15:8. That was certainly not more than 
seven years after the crucifixion. Several times 
afterwards Jesus appeared to Paul. All the 
time afterward Jesus was a living reality to 
Paul. 

We are to examine the data in Acts and the 


ACCORDING TO PAUL - 91 


Pauline Epistles with the purpose of ascertaining 
Paul’s view of the supernatural nature of Christ. 
It is alleged by certain critics that the gospel of 
Christ was changed by Paul and that original 
Christianity was corrupted by Paulinism. On 
the contrary, it can be shown that the Christ of 
the Evangelists was the Christ of Paul and that 
Christ was the source of Paul’s religion of re- 
demption. Let us see for ourselves whether Paul 
believed Christ to be supernatural or not. 

The Pre-incarnate One. Paul and John are one 
in their doctrine of the eternal existence of Christ. 
The prologue of John 1:1-14 and Phil. 2:5-8 and 
Col. 1: 15-19 can be placed in parallel columns as 
agreeable accounts of the same divine mystery. 
Paul’s passages plainly declare the eternal son- 
ship and pre-incarnate glory of Christ. The mys- 
terious statement is made in Philippians (2:6) 
that Christ being in the morphe of God did not 
look upon his equality with God as an act of 
usurpation. Christ referred to that state when 
he spoke of the glory he had with the Father be- 
fore the world was. (John 17:8.) The magnifi- 
cently dogmatic passage in Colossians on the ex- 
altation of Christ states that he existed before 
any created thing. Often has the sorrow-riven 
heart been comforted with those words in the 
funeral service: ‘‘The first man is of the earth, 
earthy : the second man is the Lord from heaven,”’ 
I Cor. 15:47. The Christ of Paul did not become 
divine when he was born of a woman, or when 


92 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the Spirit descended upon him at his baptism, 
but was divine, equal with God, before creation. 

The Man Among Men. The eternal Son volun- 
tarily ‘‘emptied himself’’—stripped himself of 
the insignia of majesty, of the habiliments of 
deity,—and took upon him the nature of a bond- 
servant by becoming a man like other men. The 
Docetics denied the humanity of Jesus. Paul 
says he was truly human (Phil. 2:7f.), had a 
human body (Col. 1:21), was born of a woman, 
born subject to Law (Gal. 4:4), was, as regards 
his human descent, of the posterity of David 
(Rom. 1:3). Paul insists that Christ was truly 
man. 

The Cerenthians denied the deity of Jesus. 
Paul says he was truly divine; for it is in Christ 
that the fullness of God’s nature dwells in a bod- 
ily manifestation (Col. 2:9). The Eternal Word 
did not empty himself of his divine nature or 
attributes, but only of the outward form or mani- 
festation of the Godhead. Jesus was not the end 
of a series of eons, but was ‘‘the first born of all 
creation’? (Col. 1:3). Paul recognizes no dis- 
tinction between the human Jesus and the divine 
Christ. He uses the words interchangeably. They 
designated one and the same person, ‘‘Christ 
Jesus the Lord,’’ Col. 2: 6. 

The Son of God. Immediately after his conver- 
sion Paul began to preach. His first sermon was 
on the theme, Jesus, the Son of God. ‘‘And 
straightway he preached Christ in the synagogue, 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 93 


that he is the Son of God,’’ Acts 9:20. Peter 
gave especial prominence to the Messiahship: 
‘‘God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have 
erucified, both Lord and Christ,’’ Acts 2:36. 
Paul, fresh from the vision on the highway, em- 
phasized Deity. Peter charged the Jews with 
erucifying the Son of God, their Messiah, Acts 
2:25-30. Paul charged them with having cruci- 
fied the Lord of Glory, I Cor. 2:8. His point was 
that Jesus, the crucified Nazarene, was the Christ 
and therefore God the Son. This was his first 
testimony as a Christian. When he returned to 
Damascus after three years’ meditation in Arabia 
he ‘‘gained more and more influence and as for 
the Jews living in Damascus, he bewildered them 
with proofs that Jesus is the Christ,’’? Acts 9:22 
(Weymouth). 

Until death, Paul was the consistent and un- 
compromising bondservant of Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God. To the Romans he wrote that the 
promise of good news through the Prophets was 
‘concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord,’’ 
Rom. 1:3. He viewed this personality as dual; 
as to his humanity, he was of the seed of David; 
as to his deity, he was decisively proved to be 
‘the Son of God by the resurrection from the 
dead,’? Rom. 1:3f. The Liberals cite ‘‘of the 
seed of David’’ in an attempt to disprove the 
deity of Jesus and the virgin birth, and claim it 
necessarily refers to Davidic ancestry and to gen- 
eration by Joseph. However, the Liberals are 


94 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


more critical than correct. The descent of Jesus 
was from David through Mary. Had these critics 
been more careful and less captious they might 
have found the same word for seed, spermatos, 
used of a woman, Rev. 12:17. 

The Pre-incarnate One, and the Man among 
Men, was therefore one person,—the Son of God. 
He was not two personalities, two wills, two 
minds, two beings; he was not God in man, or 
God and man, but the God-man. ‘‘He was the 
only true incarnation of God,—God in a human 
body, and with a human soul; and yet there are 
no absurdities’? (Pierson). The centaur, the faun 
and the mermaid, fabled inventions of duality, 
are grotesque absurdities. But Christ was an 
absolutely new being, harmonious, symmetrical, 
consistent. Paul knew him as the union of the 
divine and human in one person, the same person 
whose honest portrait is seen in the Evangelists, 
and Paul, as do they, treats this marvelous per- 
son as a reality without attempting to explain the 
profound mystery. He admitted the mystery but 
accepted the fact: ‘‘And without controversy 
great is the mystery of godliness: God was mani- 
fested in the flesh,’’? I Tim. 3:16. If the pronoun, 
who, be the correct reading, the mystery and the 
contrast compel the reference to Deity. The 
manifestation of a man in the flesh would be no 
mystery. To speak of the manifestation of a man 
_ in the flesh would be foolish. The Incarnation is 
the vital truth of which the Church of the living 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 95 


God is the pillar and support. Liberals reject it 
because they cannot understand the mystery. To 
be consistent, they should never eat another meal, 
for they cannot understand how some food goes 
to blood, some to tissue, some to bone and some to 
fat. Yet they keep on eating. They cannot ex- 
plain how the same grass makes wool on sheep 
and feathers on geese. There are a hundred mys- 
teries in every-day life which we accept and act 
upon, but cannot understand and do not attempt 
to explain. We accept and live by them. 

It is sometimes affirmed that Paul never called 
Jesus God. Let us see if he did not. To the el- 
ders he used this phrase: ‘‘The church of God 
which he hath purchased with his own blood,’’ 
Acts 20:28. The pronoun ‘‘his’’ has no ante- 
cedent but God. To the Romans, in setting forth 
the sevenfold privilege of Israel, he puts Christ 
at the climax in language which calls him God: 
‘“‘Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, 
who is over all, God blessed forever,’’ Rom. 9: 5. 
To Titus, in outlining the pastoral work of a true 
minister, he cites an incentive: ‘‘ Looking for that 
blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of our 
great God and Savior Jesus Christ,’’ Titus 2: 13. 
The article is not repeated and the grammar nat- 
urally means that God and Savior Jesus Christ 
are one and the same. Furthermore, the context 
is in harmony with this interpretation. The 
Christians were not looking for the appearing of 
God the Father. They were looking for the ap- 


96 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


pearing of God the Son. This was their happy 
hope. One must have strong predilections against 
the doctrine who does not see in these passages 
that Paul does call Jesus God. 

The Omnipotent One. Omnipotence is an at- 
tribute of God. Paul ascribes it to Jesus. He is 
the creator and sustainer of all things in earth 
and heaven, seen and unseen, thrones, dominions, 
princedoms, powers, Col. 1:16. They were ere- 
ated wm Christ, by him and for him. In him; no 
creative process was external and independent 
of him—all sources reside in him. By him; he 
was the power which called the worlds out of 
chaos into cosmos and holds them in orderly ar- 
ray. For him; he is the end as well as the source 
of all things and ‘‘in living for him every creature 
finds at once the explanation and the law of its 
being.’’ 

The Lord Jesus Christ not only created, he has 
power to re-create, to make the dead live. ‘‘We 
are awaiting with longing expectation for the 
coming from heaven of a Savior, the Lord Jesus 
Christ, who, in the exercise of the power which 
he has even to subject all things to himself, will 
transform the body of our humiliation until it 
resembles his own glorious body,’’ Phil. 3:21f 
(Weymouth). That is mightier than raising a 
twelve-year-old girl just dead, or a young man 
being buried, or a man already decaying in the 
grave. It is the direct exercise of a power which 
none but God possesses. 


ACCORDING TO PAUL Let 


The Christ of Paul was all-powerful over death. 
Over his own death; ‘‘But now is Christ risen 
from the dead, and become the first fruits of them 
that slept,’’ I Cor. 15:20. Over the death of his 
people: ‘‘Hiven so in Christ shall all be made 
alive,’’ vs. 22. Christ shall consummate his work 
by destroying the last enemy, death: ‘‘He must 
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet,’’ 
vs. 25. One may deny that Christ has this power; 
he may deny that there is any such coming event 
as his return; but no intelligent student can deny 
that Paul taught that Christ had triumphed over 
death and would return in triumph and raise and 
reward his disciples. Even now we can hear 
Paul’s pean of victory: ‘‘O death, where is thy 
sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting 
of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the 
law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the 
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,’’ I Cor. 
15: 55-57. 

The Lord of Infe. The Christ of Paul was 
something more than a beautiful memory. He 
was a living Personality. He was alive in Paul. 
He had completely mastered Paul; ‘‘But what 
things were gain to me, those I counted loss for 
Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but 
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ 
Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss 
of all things, and do count them but dung, that 
I may win Christ, and be found in him, not hav- 
ing mine own righteousness, which is of the law, 


98 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


but that which is through faith in Christ, (objec- 
tive genitive) in righteousness which is of (ek) 
God by faith,’’ Phil. 3: 7-9. 

Paul was consumed with a passion for Christ. 
Forgetting the impeding past and looking unto 
the inviting, challenging future, he ‘‘pressed to- 
ward the mark for the prize of the high calling 
of God in Christ Jesus,’’ vs. 14. He actually 
longed to share Christ’s sufferings and die even 
as he died, vs. 10. 

Christ dominated the thought and acts of Paul. 
What the living witnesses told him of the Lord, 
what the Lord revealed to him directly, and what 
truth about the Lord the Holy Spirit guided him 
into, he received reverently, expounded lucidly 
and obeyed loyally. He delved more deeply into 
the mysteries of grace and gave clearer outline 
of the mysteries of the future than any other. 
Christ was the fountain of that grace and the key 
to that future. The historical Christ was a set- 
tled fact of the past, the risen Christ was a living 
reality in the present, and the returning Christ 
was a blessed hope of the future, in the thinking 
and living of Paul. 

The first question he asked Jesus was an index 
to Paul. He wanted first to know from Jesus 
what he should do. That ascertained, questioning 
was at an end. He was not ‘‘disobedient to the 
heavenly vision.’’ He followed the gleam wher- 
ever it led—across mountains, straits, seas, and 
continents. Stoning, imprisonment, beating, ship- 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 99 


wreck, death, were mere incidents in the tran- 
scendent event of a life wholly devoted to the 
Lord. The faithful execution of the commission 
received from Jesus, the Lord of Life, was the 
reason why he suffered so severely, but he was 
not ashamed, II Tim. 1:11f. The trend of thought 
and the course of his life, from the day on which 
he saw the light until the day when his head fell 
from the block, were dominated by Christ. 

Never was man, in mind and body, so absolutely 
and cheerfully subject to another personality as 
was Paul to Christ. He came nearer to that one- 
ness with the purpose and will of Christ which 
Christ had with the Father than any one who has 
ever thought Christ’s thoughts after him. Jesus 
said he himself did ‘‘always those things that 
pleased the Father,’’ John 8:29; Paul’s ambition 
and constant effort were to please Christ (II Cor. 
5:9, Gal. 1:10). Jesus illustrated in his own 
person the principle he announced (Luke 14: 26) 
that natural affection as compared to devotion to 
divine duty was as hate compared with love, Matt. 
12: 47-50; Paul exemplified the truth that attach- 
ment to Christ transcended every earthly tie and 
devotion to Christ preceded every worldly claim, 
Phil. 3:7-9. Jesus, facing a cruel death, ex- 
claimed: ‘‘I have overcome the world,’’ John 
16:33; Paul, facing the executioner’s ax, ex- 
claimed: ‘‘I have fought a good fight, I have fin- 
ished my course, I have kept the faith,’’ If Tim. 
4:7. If Jesus were not God, Paul was indeed 


100 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


mad. Paul said his course of opposition to Christ 
was madness, (Acts 26:11), but his subsequent 
zeal for Christ was soberness and truth (Acts 
26:25). Unitarianism leaves Paul an insoluble 
riddle. 

In vain do the Unitarians attempt to show that 
the Christians’ conception of the Lordship of 
Christ was taken from surrounding paganism. 
The term ‘‘Lord’’ was common in the Hellenistic 
age as a title of divinity, no whit inferior to the 
term God, and was applied to Emperors and 
others. Paul was familiar with all this, more so 
than the Modernists. He was a sturdy monothe- 
ist, yet to him Christ was Lord, but not of the 
type of the cult-gods. He specifically states the 
Lordship of Christ in a passage of striking com- 
parison: ‘‘For, supposing there are so-called gods 
in heaven or on earth,—and indeed there are 
plenty such gods and lords,—yet, for us there is 
Just one God, the Father, who is the source of all 
things, and for whom we live, and just one Lord, 
Jesus Christ, through whom everything was made 
and through whom we live,’’ I Cor. 8:5, 6 (Good- 
speed). 

The Divine Redeemer. The mission of Jesus 
was not primarily to say, but to do. The essential 
thing about him is that he is a Redeemer. This- 
is not a conjecture. He should have known bet- 
ter than any other the nature of his mission. He 
defined it to Zaccheus: ‘‘For the Son of man is 
come to seek and to save that which was lost,’’ 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 101 


Luke 19:10. There is no need to quibble about 
‘¢Son of man.’’? That expression occurs eighty- 
four times in the Gospels. While the phrase ex- 
pressed Christ’s sense of brotherhood with men 
it is also used to designate prerogatives belonging 
exclusively to God (Mark 2:10), being always an 
official designation. The properties of the human 
and divine were indissolubly knit together in a 
single person (Alexandrian Fathers). 

The mission of Jesus Christ, then, was to seek 
and to save. But how was he to save? He an- 
swers that question explicitly: ‘‘For even the Son 
of man came not to be ministered unto but to min- 
ister and to give his life a ransom for many,’’ 
Mark 10:45. The word ‘‘ransom”’ is repulsive to 
certain modern minds. All the worse for them. 
When employed by Jesus it carried a very definite 
idea. It meant money paid for the return of a 
lost possession, or atonement money paid by a 
Jew to avert the just judgments of God upon his 
sin, or the price of redemption of a man from 
captivity or slavery, or the price paid to save a 
man from death. Jesus declared that the purpose 
for which he came was to serve men while he lived 
and to give his life as a ransom. The Gospels 
bulk the death of Christ as the most important 
fact in his life. Only two Evangelists tell of the 
virgin birth, only two record the sermon on the 
mount, but all four detail the death of Christ, 
each of them giving more than a fourth of his 
space to the Passion Week. The risen Christ 


102 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


caused the Apostles to understand the Scripture 
prediction that he must suffer and die (Luke 
24:46f). The first sermon preached after the 
death of Christ on the cross declared that his 
death was according to God’s settled purpose and 
foreknowledge (Acts 2:23). 

Now, what conception did Paul have of the ne- 
cessity and nature of Christ’s death? Precisely 
that of the four Evangelists and of the early Acts. 
The cross was central in Paul’s theology. He 
gloried in the cross (Gal. 6:14). He determined 
to be utterly ignorant, when among the Corin- 
thians, of everything except Jesus Christ, and of 
him as having been crucified (I Cor. 2:2). Even 
the radical Bousset admits that Paul’s religion 
was based upon the death of Christ. Where did 
Paul get his idea of such a Christ? The Radicals 
answer, ‘‘F'rom the common conceptions current 
in his day—the dying gods.’’ But Paul’s concep- 
tion was vastly different from these. Osiris, 
Adonis, and Attis were the victims of fate; Jesus’ 
death was voluntary and according to God’s 
eternal and Christ’s oft repeated purpose. The 
death of Christ was utterly unlike the heathen 
cults and the preaching of the cross was ‘‘to the 
Gentiles foolishness,’’ I Cor. 1:23. If Paul bor- 
rowed from the Gentiles how was it that they 
could not understand his Christ crucified? 

Obviously and unmistakably, Paul got his idea 
of the necessity and nature of the death of Christ 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 103 


from the disciples and from Christ himself. It 
was a fact of history and also a personal revela- 
tion and experience. ‘‘He loved me and gave him- 
self for me,’’ (Gal. 2:20) was Paul’s statement. 
‘‘For I repeated to you the all-important fact 
which also I had been taught, that Christ died for 
our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,’’ I Cor. 
15:3 (Weymouth). Paul does not state by whom 
he was taught this doctrine, but he had inter- 
course with the disciples (Acts 9:19) and there 
was opportunity for the instruction. His view 
was precisely that of the Gospels and early chap- 
ters of Acts. 

One illustration will suffice—the Lord’s Sup- 
per. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul all have ac- 
counts of the initiation of this sacred rite. There 
are slight variations as always occur in inde- 
pendent and truthful witnesses. However, all four 
agree upon the vital fact, viz: that it was for 
others. According to Mark, his blood is ‘‘shed 
for many’’; according to Luke ‘‘it is shed for 
you’’; according to Matthew it is ‘for many for 
the remission of sins.’’ Luke and Paul both re- 
cord Jesus as saying his body was broken for 
others. ‘‘This is my body which is given for 
you,’’? Luke 22:19; ‘‘This is my body which is 
broken for you,’’? I Cor. 11:24. The four men 
agree that Christ’s death was in a peculiar sense 
for others. That fact cannot be read out of the 
records or explained away. By a perpetual and 


104 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


impressive memorial that solemn and substantial 
fact is kept continually before the eyes and upon 
the consciousness of his people. 

A young man was being examined with a view 
to his ordination to the gospel ministry. He had 
answered the question about the death of Christ 
satisfactorily to the examiner, viz.: that it was 
voluntary and vicarious, propitiary and substitu- 
tionary. A Liberal on the Presbytery inter- 
jected: ‘‘Christ died for the truth he taught. 
Buddha died for the truth he taught. There was 
no essential difference, was there?’’ ‘‘Yes, there 
was a vital difference in the manner and meaning 
of their death,’’ replied the young minister. 
‘‘Christ died on the cross as a voluntary sin of- 
fering. Buddha ate a big dinner and lay down 
under a tree and died of indigestion.’’ I have not 
verified the statement as to Buddha’s death, but 
the Liberal did not dispute it and the Liberals 
are, confessedly, very learned. 

Paul powerfully portrayed the crucifixion. It 
was so vividly placarded in Galatia that it was as 
if Christ had been crucified right before their eyes 
(3:1). Sophistry had bewitched them to turn 
away from the cross as the way of salvation. Paul 
calls them back to the cross. That was the only 
way of salvation. A man is not justified by works 
of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ (Gal. 2:16). 
Men are not the sons of God by nature but by 
faith in Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:26). Paul demon- 
strated in two masterly epistles, Romans and Ga- 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 105 


latians, that salvation is universally available, by 
faith in Jesus Christ, and in no other way. 

The Unitarians teach salvation by character. 
Not one of them is the peer of Paul in character; 
not one of them is as blameless touching the law; 
not one of them is more sincere or so ardent for 
righteousness. Nevertheless, Paul despaired of 
salvation by character. He would not trust in the 
flesh, in physical advantages or in good deeds. 
No flesh was justified by the deeds of the law. 
Justification was not by works of righteousness. 
There was none righteous save Christ. Righteous- 
ness and life were through saving faith in him. 
He came, not to teach men how to live, but to 
give them a new life through death. Character 
was the fruit, not the root, of salvation. A good 
life was the result of salvation, not the procuring 
eause. ‘‘For when we were still helpless, at the 
decisive moment Christ died for us godless men. 
Why, a man will hardly give his life for an up- 
right person, though perhaps for a really good 
man some may be brave enough to die.. But God 
proves his love for us by the fact that Christ died 
for us when we were still sinners. So, if we have 
already been made upright by his death, it is far 
more certain that through him we shall be saved 
from God’s anger! If, when we were God’s ene- 
mies, we were reconciled to him through the death 
of his Son, it is far more certain that now that we 
are reconciled we shall be saved through sharing 
his life! More than that, we actually glory in 


106 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


God through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we 
owe our reconciliation,’? Rom. 5:6-11. (Good- 
speed.) 

This, in brief, is Paul’s plan of salvation. It is 
in exact harmony with the teachings of Christ in 
the Synoptic Gospels, as we have seen, and also 
in John, e.g., his conversation with Nicodemus. It 
has been the refuge of saints in ages past, is their 
comfort in the present, and their hope for the 
future. 


‘¢When the woes of life o’ertake me, 
Hopes deceive, and fears annoy, 
Never shall the cross forsake me; 
Lo! it glows with peace and joy. 


‘¢When the sun of bliss is beaming 
Light and love upon my way, 
From the cross the radiance streaming, 
Adds new luster to the day.’’ 


The Supreme Judge. Christ taught three 
things about the judgment. 

1. The fact. He looked forward to one great 
day; a final judgment by which men are sepa- 
rated and assigned their respective destinies. 
The parables of the Tares and Dragnet and the 
twenty-fifth of Matthew all describe the judg- 
ment. 

2. The judge. He is the judge. ‘‘Across the 
dim and conflicting images evoked by his other 
teaching about the future one point shines with 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 107 


a steady and unchangeable light,’’ that he is judge 
(Stalker). ‘‘The Father judgeth no man, but 
hath committed all judgment unto the Son,”’ 
John 5: 22. 

3. The issue. The final fate of men is deter- 
mined by their relation to Christ. ‘‘In as much 
as ye did it to the least of these my brethren, ye 
did it unto me,’’ Matt. 25:40. ‘‘I will profess 
unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, 
ye that work iniquity,’’ Matt. 7:23. Huis discern- 
ment detects the vital issue with unerring preci- 
sion and by that issue the everlasting state is de- 
cided. 

Paul taught the same things as did Christ. It 
is amazing that men should say Paul founded a 
second Christianity with doctrines radically dif- 
ferent from those of Christ. Far from Paul sub- 
verting Christianity by turning it into another 
channel, he deepened and broadened the channel 
through which original Christianity flowed. 
Hivery comparison of Paul’s Christ with the Christ 
of the Evangelists clarifies this stream of truth. 
Consider the comparison as to the judgment. 

1. The fact. The great event of the future in 
the mind of Paul was the judgment. ‘‘God hath 
appointed a day,’’ Acts 17:31. ‘‘We must all 
appear,’’ Rom. 14:10. ‘‘I charge thee, there- 
fore,’’ II Tim. 4:1. By the certainty of that com- 
ing event he warned skeptical Gentiles, stressed 
individual responsibility of believers, and en- 
joined faithfulness upon preachers. 


108 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


2. The judge. God is the Creator, Supreme 
Ruler, and Judge of the universe. Paul was 
firmly grounded in those fundamentals of Mono- 
theism. Yet he says that Jesus is the judge. It 
is ‘‘Christ’s judgment seat,’’ II Cor. 5:10. He is 
the appointed judge (Acts 17:31), just as on 
earth Christ said the judgeship had been commit- 
ted to him. The correct text in Rom. 14:10 is 
Theou and not Christou, but that does not weaken 
the position taken in this discussion. See Sanday 
on this point: ‘‘God is here mentioned as Judge 
because He judged the world through Christ. .. . 
The Father and the Son were in his mind so united 
in function that They may often be interchanged. 
God, or Christ, or God through Christ, will judge 
the world. Our life is in God, or in Christ, or 
with Christ in God. The union of man with God 
depends upon the intimate union of the Father 
and the Son.’’ 

3. The issue. The verdict of acquittal or con- 
demnation was according as one is related to 
Jesus Christ. ‘‘There is therefore now no con- 
demnation to those who are in Christ J esus,’’ 
Rom. 8:1. There is no condemnation from the 
law, whose demands Christ met, or from inherent 
sinfulness, of which Christ was absolutely free; 
no condemnation from any source for any cause 
possible forever for those in Christ Jesus. 

At the close of his life of apostleship, Paul joy- 
fully anticipated the coming judgment, the person 
of the judge and the personal issue: ‘‘Henceforth 


ACCORDING TO PAUL 109 


there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness 
which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me 
at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them 
also that love his appearing,’’ II Tim. 4:8, ‘‘That 
day,’’ so marked a feature in the teaching of Jesus 
that he came to refer to it without considering it 
necessary to specify, had become identical to Paul 
who had passed from condemnation to acquittal 
by faith in the crucified, risen, reigning, and re- 
turning Christ, and who was happy in the expec- 
tation of receiving his crown. ‘‘That day’’ is 
bright and full of hope and blessedness to all who 
now trust and love the Lord and look for his ap- 
pearing. It is dark and full of dread to all who 
doubt, disbelieve, or oppose. 


‘When thou, my righteous Judge, shalt come 
To take thy ransomed people home, 
Shall I among them stand? 


‘<Shall such a worthless worm as I, 
Who sometimes am afraid to die, 
Be found at thy right hand?’’ 


VI 
THE VIRGIN BIRTH 


The virgin birth of Jesus is found in all the 
great creeds of evangelical and Catholic Christi- 
anity. It is a cardinal tenet. Whoever assents to 
these creeds accepts this doctrine. Evidently, not 
all who recite the creed with their lips believe it 
with their hearts. Recent issues of the New York 
Times devote columns to the dissenting views of 
men who are logically and honorably bound by 
the Apostles’ Creed and yet who repudiate or 
question the virgin birth. 

I do not subscribe to any creed. My sole au- 
thority for faith is the New Testament. To every 
doctrine contained in that book I subscribe. To 
as much of a creed as conforms to New Testament 
teaching I would give my assent; not because it 
is in the creed but because it is in the New Testa- 
ment. Creeds are the productions of uninspired 
men who endeavor to summarize and state Bible 
doctrine. Being human and uninspired they are 
fallible. 

I believe in the virgin birth as an article of - 
faith founded upon good reasons. One of these 
reasons is the documentary evidence. There are 
four biographies of Jesus. The one by Mark does 


not profess to relate the early life of Jesus. It be- 
110 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 111 


gins with his public ministry, but it begins by af- 
firming that he was ‘‘the Son of God.’’ The one 
by John begins with the eternal preéxistence and 
deity of Jesus and declares that he ‘‘was made 
flesh and dwelt among us.’’ The one by Matthew 
narrates the events of Jesus’ birth from the view- 
point of Joseph. Joseph was in grave perplexity 
over Mary’s condition. He was a prudent and 
chivalrous man who was unwilling to put his be- 
trothed to public shame. He purposed to shield 
her and protect himself by giving Mary a pri- 
vate letter of divorce with two subscribing wit- 
nesses. God came to the rescue. He informed 
Joseph that Mary’s condition was of the Holy 
Spirit; that she should bring forth a son who 
should save his people from their sins; and the 
biographer adds that this was in fulfillment of 
the prophecy of the Lord: ‘‘ Behold a virgin shall 
be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and 
they shall call his name Immanuel.’’ He used 
the Greek, parthenos, which is the word in the 
Septuagint. That translation of the Hebrew Old 
Testament into Greek was completed by 150 

*--AeD; Those learned translators used the word 
which conveyed their idea of the meaning of the 
prophecy. 

The biography by Luke narrates the events of 
Jesus’ birth from the side of Mary. It tells of 
the annunciation to the virgin Mary in explicit 
terms: ‘‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, 
and the power of the Most High shall overshadow 


112 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


thee: wherefore also that which is to be born 
shall be called holy, the Son of God. For with 
God nothing shall be impossible.’? The full ac- 
count by Matthew is in chapter 1: 18-25; the full 
account by Luke is in chapter 1: 26-38; any one 
can examine the accounts for himself. They both 
employ the word parthenos which means: ‘‘ Virgin 
even if married. Here unmarried but betrothed.’’ 
(Robertson. ) 

Analyzing the evidence we have: 1. Only two 
of the four Gospels mention the birth of Jesus 
and each of them records that he entered the 
world by miraculous means. Both of them state 
that Mary was the mother and the Holy Spirit 
the father. The two records are independent, 
complementary and convincing. One of them, 
Matthew, takes pains to show that the virgin 
birth was in accord with the Old Testament of 
which he is an expert interpreter. The one by 
Luke is the account of a physician who had 
‘traced the course of all things accurately from 
the first’’ and the historicity of whose writing is 
established. The first thing in Luke, after his 
painstaking introduction, is the nativity narra- 
tive. There stand two credible witnesses testify- 
ing to this great doctrine. There is not a witness 
in the New Testament who contradicts them. 

2. The Gospel by Mark does not deal with the 
early years of Jesus. It is as fallacious to say 
that Jesus did not have a boyhood because Mark 
does not mention it as it is to say he did not have 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 113 


a virgin birth because Mark does not mention it. 
It is significant, however, that the first verse of 
Mark’s Gospel is entirely consistent with the 
birth accounts of Matthew and Luke, and that 
throughout his Gospel which records the mighty 
deeds of Jesus his supernatural character is rec- 
ognized. 

3. The Gospel by John opens with an account 
of Jesus before the creation of the world. He 
was with God in the beginning and was God. 
John then says this eternal Christ was incarnated, 
became man. He skips from the pre-incarnation 
to the public ministry of the Baptist. We hear 
him first tell of Jesus existing in eternity. We 
next hear him telling of Jesus dwelling among 
men in the glory of the only begotten of the 
Father. Here we have a biographer who tells us 
that Jesus was God in eternity and that he was 
God in time; that the preéxistent one was made 
fiesh. John does not describe the process of that 
transition from eternity to time. Are we, there- 
fore, to conclude that there was no virgin birth? 
By no means. On the contrary, John’s first chap- 
ter necessitates a virgin birth. John says that 
Jesus’ divine life was continuous before and after 
his incarnation, that he was ‘‘God only begot- 
ten.’’ The facts stated by John plead the virgin 
birth. Those facts fit the faith, they harmonize 
with the doctrine of the virgin birth. In the 
Supernatural person of Christ the virgin birth 
was natural. There is no other way to explain 


114 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


how he became man without impairing his deity. 

To sum up the evidence; there are four biogra- 
phies of Jesus. Two of them record his miracu- 
lous birth in language which cannot be explained 
away. The other two record nothing of the 
earthly life of Jesus until he begins his public 
ministry, but their first mention of him is of such 
a nature as to harmonize with the two birth ac- 
counts and even to demand them as an explana- 
tion of this supernatural character. The logician 
and philosopher, Prof. Noah K. Davis, used to 
sum up the evidence in this case before the stu- 
dents of the University of Virginia by presenting 
inescapable alternatives: ‘‘Whoever rejects the 
supernatural features of this story, and, while ad- 
mitting it to have an historical basis, insists on 
natural order, thus denying the virginity of the 
mother of Jesus, must fall in with the views of 
the gossips of Nazareth and hold either that Jo- 
seph was a vile seducer and Jesus begotten out 
of wedlock, a legitimized bastard; or that Mary 
was a harlot, legally amenable to stoning, who by 
extravagant lies imposed upon the pious simplic- 
ity of her fascinated betrothed, and that Jesus the 
fruit of this wickedness, was a bastard of unac- 
knowledged paternity.’’ Such an one is not ‘‘my 
Lord and my God.’’ 

Another reason for belief in the virgin birth is 
the logic of the situation. If the birth of Jesus 
was natural, who was his father? Not Joseph, 
for he disclaimed the paternity of Mary’s concep- 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 115 


tion. The dilemma is that Jesus was begotten of 
the Holy Spirit, or he was conceived out of wed- 
lock and outside betrothal. One shudders at the 
suggestion. The orthodox view is the more rea- 
sonable, the more ethical, the more comforting. 
In the light of Mary’s exemplary life and Jesus’ 
peerless character the virgin birth is the more 
plausible view. | 

If Jesus was God in human form, miraculous 
circumstances must have accompanied his as- 
sumption of that human form. Instead of the 
virgin birth being an incongruous portent, it is 
dissociable in thought from the Incarnation. In- 
stead of being a barrier to faith, it is the intelli- 
gible explanation of how deity became flesh. 

The case of Jesus is unlike that of ourselves. 
We begin life at the moment of our human gen- 
eration. He did not begin when he was born; his 
Own consciousness was of a prior existence. Lis- 
ten to the words of Jesus. To the inquiring and 
doubting Nicodemus he said: ‘‘No man _ hath 
ascended up to heaven, but he that came down 
from heaven, even the Son of man which is in 
heaven,’’ John 3:13. Of his offended followers 
at a crisis in his ministry he inquired: ‘‘ What if 
ye behold the Son of man ascending where he was 
before?’’ John. 6:62. Near the close he prayed 
to God the Father: ‘‘O Father, glorify thou me, 
with thine own self with the glory which I had 
with thee before the world was,’’ Jno. 17:5. To 
the cavilling Jews he said: ‘‘ Ye are from beneath: 


116 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


I am from above: ye are of this world: I am not 
of this world,’’ Jno. 8:23. It is not remarkable 
that the birth of such an one should have been 
unique. We should expect it to be unusual, ex- 
ceptional, miraculous. ‘‘In a person so supernat- 
ural the virgin birth was natural.’’ I cannot con- 
ceive of another method by which Jesus might 
have made his advent. 

Jesus is unlike ourselves in that he never calls 
Joseph, or any other man, his father. We have 
fathers in the flesh of whom and to whom we 
speak; not so with Jesus. Whenever he speaks 
of his Father he refers to God. This is so plain 
in the Gospels that I suppose no one will deny 
it. It is tremendously significant. 

Another reason for belief in the virgin birth is 
the presupposition of Paul. It is insisted by cer- 
tain liberals that Paul has perverted the original 
gospel and by certain other liberals that there 
was no miraculous birth of Jesus because Paul 
never refers to it. When Paulinism is contrary 
to their theory they reject it as an accretion or 
corruption; when they think they can use Paul in 
favor of their predilections they cite him as an 
authority. Such is the inconsistency of men! 
Does the silence of Paul disprove the virgin birth 
of Jesus? 

The knowledge Paul possessed of Jesus is an 
intensely interesting question. Before his con- 
version he knew more about the life of Jesus than 
is generally conceded. What happened to him 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH Lit 


on the Damascus road was not so much a com- 
munication of new facts as a new interpretation 
of these facts. Jesus Christ appeared to Paul in 
mercy to call him to salvation and service, to 
grant him forgiveness and to commission him as 
an apostle. In the exercise of that apostleship 
Paul only four times cites the words of Jesus: 
(1) In I Cor. 7:10, he appeals to a command of 
Jesus about divorce; (2) in I Cor. 9:14 he ealls 
attention to an ordinance of Jesus providing sup- 
port for preachers; (3) in I Thess. 4:15 he quotes 
Jesus to show that those who are alive at the 
Parousia shall not go before those that have died 
in the Lord; and (4) in I Cor. 11:23 he re- 
peats the words Jesus spoke in instituting the 
Lord’s Supper. Are we to infer that the Sermon 
on the Mount was never delivered because Paul 
never mentions it? Most assuredly not. The ar- 
gument from silence is not convincing. It proves 
too much in this instance. 

The Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of Paul 
—no mere prophet, no mere interpreter of God— 
but the long looked for Messiah; no mere ethical 
teacher, no mere moral exemplar, but a superna- 
tural person come to earth to redeem men from 
sin. Paul said Jesus was born of a woman; he 
never said he was born of man. He applies the 
name Jesus to the risen Lord, and the lofty title 
of Lord to the Jesus who was crucified. 

Furthermore, Paul’s Epistles do not contain 
his first missionary messages. They are ad- 


118 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


dressed to those who had, for the most part, been 
converted under his ministry and to whom he had 
proclaimed the primary truths. These initial 
facts are sometimes omitted from the Hpistles, 
therefore, not because they were unimportant but 
just because they were fundamental and had al- 
ready been proclaimed. They would not be re- 
peated unless challenged. Except for misunder- 
standing of his oral teaching about the resurrec- 
tion he would not have set down in writing the 
testimony by which the resurrection of Jesus was 
established; yet he says that testimony was a vital 
part of his original message. Had it not been for 
the errorist whose misunderstanding he endeay- 
ored to correct, Modernists might have inferred 
that Paul did not attach importance to the doc- 
trine of the resurrection. Likewise Paul’s ac- 
count of the institution of the Lord’s Supper is 
given only because certain abuses of that ordi- 
nance had arisen in the church at Corinth. May it 
not be that the virgin birth was preached by Paul 
and never challenged and hence not explained in 
an Hpistle? 

The Pauline Epistles treat the unique person- 
ality of Christ as the Bible does the existence of 
God; they assume, they affirm, they do not defend. 
It never occurred to Paul that his doctrine of the 
heavenly Christ required defense. He had to de- 
fend his own apostleship, Gentile freedom, and 
other things; but even the Judaizers did not dis- 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 119 


pute the exalted and solitary place he assigned 
to the person of Jesus. 

The virgin birth is presupposed by Paul in sev- 
eral passages. Addressing the Galatians he be. 
gins: ‘‘An apostle, not of men, neither by man, 
but by Jesus Christ.’? The Judaizers said he was 
not an apostle by Jesus Christ but by man. But 
apparently it never occurred to Paul that one 
might say, ‘‘By Jesus Christ and, therefore, by 
man.’’ His opponents agreed with him that Jesus 
Christ was not ordinary humanity but truly God. 

When Paul would present Christ as the believ- 
er’s pattern he used terms appropriate to deity 
and described a course which involved the virgin 
birth; ‘Christ Jesus, who being in the form of 
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 
but made himself of no reputation and took upon 
him the form of a servant, and was made in the 
likeness of men,’’ Phil. 2:5-6. How could he who 
preéxisted in the form and with the equality of 
God pass from that state to the state of likeness 
to man so naturally, so becomingly, as by the way 
told in the birth stories of Matthew and Luke? 
Paul earnestly exhorted the Corinthians to liber- 
ality towards the poor. The most apposite illus- 
tration, the most touching appeal, he could think 
of was the example of Jesus. ‘‘For ye know the 
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that, though he 
was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that 
ye through his poverty might be rich,’’? II Cor. 


120 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


8:9. When was Jesus rich? Manifestly, before 
his incarnation. When did he become poor? Ob- 
viously when he took human form. How did he 
cross the gulf between heavenly riches and earthly 
poverty? There was but one way he could cross 
and that was by the Holy Spirit through a virgin. 
In what other way, tell us, could our rich Lord 
of glory enter into this world? It is noteworthy 
that Paul not only did not submit to the presenta- 
tion of a purely human Jesus, but that he resisted 
the unhistorical speculations about Jesus which 
would reduce him to a character lower than God, 
or remove him from his position as the Divine 
Redeemer. ‘‘For by him were all things created 

. all things were created by him, and for him: 
and he is before all things and by him all things 
consist... .. For it pleased the Father that in 
him should all fulness dwell. And having made 
peace through the blood of his cross, by him to 
reconcile all things unto himself,’’ Col. 1:15, 16, 
19, 20. Before the incarnation he was God’s in- 
strument in creation. During the incarnation he 
was indwelt by the divine fullness and was the 
instrument in redemption by the cross. Did God 
withdraw all but natural forces from his entrance 
into the world? Did God expose him to the just 
and stinging shame of being born illegitimately? 
Did God, in this his supreme effort, merely give 
us another specimen of a marred type, and not 
the revelation of the pure and perfect type of 
original creation? These questions cannot be es- 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 121 


caped unless we accept the virgin birth. Without 
that, Jesus must have partaken of sinful hered- 
ity. With that, Jesus took flesh from his mother 
only and is both God and man. As Canon Lid- 
don says: ‘‘He is not less truly representative of 
our race because in him it has recovered its per- 
fection.”’ 

Still another consideration in favor of the vir- 
gin birth is the absence of a challenge of the doc- 
trine by any inspired speaker or writer. No- 
where in the New Testament do I find an approved 
apostle, prophet, evangelist, teacher, or pastor 
who denied, or questioned, the virgin birth of our 
Lord. I do find there a denial of the truth ex- 
pressed in the virgin birth, the mark of false 
teachers: ‘‘Kivery Spirit that confesseth not that 
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: 
and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof we 
have heard that it should come; and even now 
already is it in the world,’ I John 4:2. I do find 
there frequent recognition of the mystery of the 
incarnation and a solemn warning against specu- 
lative philosophy: ‘‘Beware lest any man spoil 
you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the 
tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, 
and not according to Christ,’’ Col. 2:8. I do find 
there a solemn charge to keep inviolate the de- 
posit of faith from which some then, as now, had 
departed: ‘‘O Timothy, guard that which is com- 
mitted to thee, turning away from profane bab- 
blings and oppositions of that which is falsely 


122 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


called knowledge; which some professing erred 
concerning the faith,’’ I Tim. 6: 20 f. 

The direct testimony of two Evangelists and the 
logical implications of the other two; the necessi- 
ties of the case and the consciousness of eternal 
sonship by Jesus; the assumption by Paul and 
the profound passages in which he discusses deity 
becoming human; the absence of any challenge of 
the virgin birth by a New Testament writer and 
the anathemas against those who deny that Jesus 
Christ has come in the flesh; the warnings against 
speculation and the exhortation to hold fast and 
forth the faith; these, taken altogether, should 
reassure us that the doctrine standeth sure, and 
hearten us to preach it with confidence and cour- 
age. 

Do you ask then: ‘‘Why is there such agitation 
over this long-cherished and well-supported ar- 
ticle of faith?’? The answer is four-fold. 

1. There are members of evangelical churches 
who are practically Unitarians. Unitarianism as 
a distinct sect is inconsequential. As a leaven in 
the other sects it is to be considered. There be 
those in the Buen e ence denominations who would 
divest Jesus’ person of its deity, eliminate all the 
miracles from the gospels, and retain what they 
would call the real Jesus. Mr. Thomas Jefferson 
essayed that task and signally failed. The so- 
called ‘‘Jefferson’s Bible’’ is entombed in a few 
comprehensive libraries. It was never read by 
the masses. There was no heart-throb in it, no 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 123 


Savior for a lost sinner, no balm for a bruised | 
heart. Furthermore, there was not as much evi- 
dence for the Jesus of the Unitarian, Jefferson, 
as there was for the Jesus of orthodox evangeli- 
calism. The original garment was so rent and 
torn by the attempt to take out select parts that 
the part which was taken out was damaged and 
the part which was left was destroyed. That, I 
confidently affirm, will be the result of every 
effort to separate the natural from the super- 
natural in the gospel portrait of Jesus. The 
two are inextricably intertwined and no skill can 
dissociate them. 

2. There is a type of criticism which professes 
to believe only so much of the Bible as it can con- 
firm in the light of modern research. It does not 
accept the Jesus of the Gospels, but only so much 
of his teachings and such views of his character 
as accord with the rules by which they measure. 
By this method I can prove that Woodrow Wil- 
son never attended Davidson College because that 
name does not appear upon the register of the 
College or Literary Society. Or, I can prove that 
there were two of him there because there were 
two matriculates at the same time by the name of 
Thomas Wilson. You can disprove and prove 
whatever you wish by this method. 

It is inexcusable presumption for one to under- 
take to dissect the Bible and say, ‘‘This is genuine 
because it is in the author’s style and this is spu- 
rious because it is not in the author’s style.’’ Mr. 


124 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Bok employed Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt 
to write for the Ladies’ Home Journal anony- 
mously. Hvery reader was more or less familiar 
with Mr. Roosevelt’s habits of thought and style 
of expression, but no one guessed aright his au- 
thorship. 

The identification of spurious passages in the 
writings of a Bible author of centuries ago by the 
supposed difference in vocabulary and style is 
impossible. In the last half of the nineteenth cen-. 
tury Dr. Crawford Toy wrote a radical book of 
Old Testament criticism. That book was reviewed 
anonymously in the Religious Herald. Dr. Rob- 
ert Ryland, President of Richmond College, read 
that review and wrote the Herald approving it 
and praising Dr. John A. Broadus as the author. 
‘*For,’? said Dr. Ryland, ‘‘although it did not 
bear his signature, it did bear his ear marks and 
Broadus was the only man among us who could 
have written the review.’’ Dr. Broadus read the 
communication by Dr. Ryland and wrote the 
Herald disclaiming authorship of the review. 
Whereupon, the Editor announced that Dr. J. C. 
Hiden wrote the review. Now, there was Dr. 
Ryland, himself no mean scholar, who knew both 
Broadus and Hiden intimately, was thoroughly 
familiar with their traits of mind and modes of 
expression, and yet who, on a question of literary 
criticism, erroneously attributed the production of 
one to the other. 

3. Some professed Christians reject the mirac- 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 125 


ulous im toto on the ground that it is unscientific. 
That is the drift of the Modernists. It would not 
be far amiss to define Modernism as an attempt to 
get rid of the supernatural in Christianity. It 
holds that nature is a system of invariable law 
and its reign is universal. Then, indeed, is there 
no room for the virgin birth, for God is a prisoner 
in his own universe and everything is irrevocably 
fixed beyond the power of the divine will to inter- 
vene. Such an attitude is unscientific and un- 
philosophical. The force of gravity is, so far as 
we know, a universal law. Throw a pebble up 
into the air. For the moment, there is the inter- 
vention of a will and a counteraction of the law 
of gravity. That stone goes upward because a 
new force comes in to produce a new effect. Can- 
not the Almighty God, who created and rules the 
universe, exert his will and produce an effect, and 
was not the incarnation of his son a pnteinntt oc- 
casion? 

Hverything does not come about by natural law. 
Much is achieved by human will. The other night 
I was with a group of friends hunting in the 
woods. It became uncomfortably cold. No inex- 
orable law warmed our chilled bodies. We gath- 
ered fuel, struck a match, kindled a fire, and 
warmed ourselves. We brought about, by the ex- 
ercise of our wills, a combination and a result 
which the laws of nature alone would never 
achieve. Cannot the great God do as much and 
would he not be expected to do as much to warm 


126 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


into spiritual life and vigor a cold and frozen 
world? His will did intervene when he revealed 
his heart of love in Jesus Christ who was a won- 
drous combination of the human and divine and 
thus effected reconciliation. 

There is electricity. Natural laws never gath- 
ered its mysterious forces into light and power 
for the convenience and service of man. We had 
never known its value but for the ingenious abil- 
ity, the inventive will, of man. Who has the om- 
niscience to say that the Almighty did not assert 
his will in begetting that combination of deity and 
humanity which is the Light of the world and the 
Power of God? 

4. A final explanation for the agitation against 
the virgin birth is the mistaken idea of well mean- 
ing men that the doctrine is an encumbrance to 
Christianity. They claim that the mystery at- 
tending the doctrine is a stumbling-block to faith. 
Well, there is mystery in all life. We do not, on 
that account, discard life. 

The beginnings of matter and of man are mys- 
teries. There is less mystery in God begetting 
Christ through a woman than there is in God cre- 
ating the first man out of the dust of the earth as 
Genesis teaches, or out of protoplasm as evolution 
teaches. 

Many inconceivable operations go on daily be- 
fore our eyes and in our physical and mental 
make-up. The manner in which a man’s will 
causes his foot to move is inconceivable, but we 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 127 


continue to move our feet. In fact, you cannot 
explain ‘‘the manner in which any cause operates 
to produce its immediate effect.’? A philosopher 
has said: ‘‘Neither physiology nor psychology, 
nor physiological psychology pretends to offer 
any explanation of how a man’s will affects his 
brain so as to bring about the contraction of a 
muscle.’’ 

The most avowed Modernist cannot think the 
virgin birth more incredible than our forefathers 
would have thought a prediction that their de- 
scendants would be robbing the night of its pall 
and turning darkness into day, flying the air in 
ships like birds, sending messages thousands of 
miles over wires and ether waves, listening in 
their homes to human voices long silenced in 
death and, even more wonderful, enjoying the 
music of choirs and orchestras in cities far dis- 
tant. Mystery! there is mystery all about us. 
There are many yet unseen realities. 


‘“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, 
Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’’ 


In the incarnation there is mystery. Yes, and 
blessed reality! 

I would have our Modernist brethren to ponder 
well the words of Huxley from a private letter to 
the Dean of Wells: ‘‘I have not the slightest ob- 
jection to offer a priori to all the propositions in 


128 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


the three creeds. The mysteries of the Church 
are child’s play compared with the mysteries of 
nature. The doctrine of the Trinity is not more 
puzzling than the necessary antinomies of phys- 
ical speculation; virgin procreation and resuscita- 
tion from apparent death are ordinary phenom- 
ena for the naturalist. It would be a great er- 
ror, therefore, to suppose that the Agnostic re- 
jects Theology because of its puzzles and wonders. 
He rejects it simply because in his judgment there 
would be no evidence sufficient to warrant the 
theological proposition, even if they related to the 
commonest and most obvious every-day proposi- 
tion.’’ 

Should we surrender to the Modernists in their 
opposition to the virgin birth of Jesus, what 
would be the result? In the first place, there 
would not be peace for they would also assail the 
fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which is 
the most essential doctrine of Christianity. They 
would be emboldened to attempt the elimination of 
all the supernatural from our holy religion and 
to leave us a shell without a kernel, a body with- 
out life, a religion without a divine redeemer. 
The New Testament is no ‘‘scrap of paper’’ to 
be torn to bits. 

In the second place, we should have to revise 
our hymnology and delete those magnificent 
hymns which have warmed and charmed the 
hearts of young and old,—The Benedictus, The 
Magnificat, and Gloria in Excelsus. They are 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 129 


meaningless without the virgin birth; they are 
misrepresentations. 

In the third place, we should find ourselves in 
the anomalous position of holding to ethical teach- 
ings of Jesus for which there is no more historical 
evidence than for the virgin birth. For, be it re- 
membered, the only two authors who report the 
much admired address of Jesus to his disciples 
are the same authors who record his miraculous 
birth. 

In the fourth place, we should not have the 
Jesus who was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, 
and whose unique personality demanded a unique 
birth,—the Jesus of the four gospels, of Paul, 
of historic Christianity,—the only one in whom 
there ‘‘is hope of salvation.”’ 

This is too great a price to pay. Peace among 
brethren is desirable and admirable, but not 
peace at any price, not peace at the sacrifice of 
essentials. If such a compromise gave the Mod- 
ernists peace what of ourselves? With a mu- 
tilated gospel, a liberal Jesus, and a merely eth- 
ical religion, we should be of all men most miser- 
able,—and the world would be hopelessly lost. 

At the season which celebrates the Savior’s 
birth we join in the song of the angels beneath 
the star-lit sky o’er Bethlehem’s fields: 


‘*Glory to God in the highest 
And on earth peace 
Among men in whom he is well pleased.”’ 


130 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


We go in gladness with the shepherds to the 
manger and look with faith and reverence upon 
the manifold paradox: 


‘‘The King of the Universe—hidden in a cave; 
The great God—become a little babe; 
The Ancient of Days—a new-born infant; 
The Eternal One—an hour old.’’ 


We stand with Simeon and Anna in the sacred 
court and rejoice with them in the birth of the 
Lord’s Christ: 


‘A light for the unveiling of the Gentiles 
And the glory of thy people Israel.’’ 


We journey with the Magi, scientists of their 
time, to the house in Bethlehem and see the mar- 
velous child and the modest mother; we fall down 
with them and worship him and offer to him our 
gifts of gold as to a king, frankincense as to a god, 
and myrrh as to a sacrifice. 

Thou wonderful babe! There have been many 
births but never one like thine. Heaven and earth 
rejoiced when thou camest into the world. Hum- 
ble and honest sons of the fields, righteous men of 
religion and pious women of prophetic gifts, de- 
vout students of nature and loyal followers of the 
star of truth recognized thee as the heaven-born 
Prince of Peace, the Lord’s Christ who bringeth 
salvation, and the new-born King of all ages, 
races and continents. Thou still hast power to 


THE VIRGIN BIRTH 131 


eharm the mind, soothe the heart, and sway the 
will of all classes of men. May we feel thy power 
afresh! 


‘<'Thee, on the bosom laid 
Of a pure virgin mind, 
In quiet ever, and in shade, 
Shepherds and Sage may find; 
They who have bowed untaught to Nature’s 


sway, 
And they who follow Truth along the star- 
paved way.”’ 


Vil 
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 


The fundamental tenet of Christianity is the 
Resurrection of Jesus. Other doctrines are im- 
portant; this one is essential. Philosophically, 
logically, historically and theologically, it is the 
chief cornerstone of the Christian temple. Philo- 
sophically, it explains the change in the disciples 
from despairing hope and frightful fear to fer- 
vent faith and conquering courage; logically, it is 
the inevitable result of the sinlessness and tran- 
scendent goodness of Jesus; historically, it is the 
source of the New Testament and of Christianity; 
theologically, it is more than a historical fact for 
faith—it is the gospel of salvation and service, 
of morality and immortality. While this doctrine 
stands, Christianity stands; when it falls, Chris- 
tianity falls. 

The Resurrection is also the most stupendous 
of supernatural events. Three dead ones were 
raised to life in the Old Testament; the son of 
the widow of Zarephath by Elijah, the Shunam- 
mite’s son by Elisha, and the corpse which touched 
the bones of Elisha. Three dead ones were raised 
to life in the Gospels; the daughter of Jairus, the 
son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus of Beth- 


any. ‘T'wo dead ones were raised to life in the 
132 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 133 


Acts: Dorcas by Peter, and Eutychus by Paul. 
All eight of these were resuscitations effected 
through others. But the case of Jesus stands 
alone in the Bible. Of him it is said that it was 
not possible for the grave to hold him, that he 
arose by a power within himself, that the energy 
of God wrought directly through him. 

If this event occurred, all other miracles sink 
into insignificance compared with its transcen- 
dence. Here is the storm-center of Naturalism vs. 
Supernaturalism. For, if the Resurrection is es- 
tablished, there can be no insuperable difficulty in 
other miracles. One who admits the Resurrec- 
tion, can accept all the miracles narrated of Jesus. 
Indeed, such an one is logically bound to accept 
everything supernatural for which there is suffi- 
cient evidence. The Resurrection of Jesus is the 
algebraic formula by which to find the solution of 
the supernatural. 

The crucial question is: Did Jesus rise from the 
dead? What is the truth about this matter? The 
quest of Science, Philosophy, History, and Re- 
ligion is truth. When knowledge copies fact, the 
result is truth. So that, the basis of truth is fact, 
and intelligence is that knowledge of fact which 
leads to truth, which is the expression of reality. 
We shall enquire as to the facts in order that we 
may arrive at truth. 

At the outset we are met by objections which 
must be considered. We may summarize these 
under four divisions. 


134 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


1. The Resurrection is impossible. This is 
urged by those who insist that the laws of nature 
are invariable, self-operating and universal. The 
difficulty which the scientist encounters in ap- 
proaching this subject is his conception of the 
uniform reign of natural law and his misconcep- 
tion that the Resurrection is a subversion of that - 
law. 

The laws of nature are the observed uniformi- 
ties of nature. They are simply the way in which 
man has observed that natural forces usually act 
and interact. But man has observed that the hu- 
man will has combined and directed the forees of 
nature, so as to bring about results not otherwise 
observed, or attained. Man gathers the electric- 
ity, long unknown, and makes it serve his purpose 
in ways which before it never did, by the mere 
operation of natural law, and which men once 
thought impossible. No one says that is breaking 
natural law. 

Since man has this freedom of action, this power 
of working, it is inconceivable that the divine 
Being should be so fettered as to be unable to 
interpose his will and counteract the ordinary 
laws of his working, in order to effect an adequate 
end. Rightly interpreted, a miracle does not dis- 
turb the true conception of the system of nature. 
If there were no order of nature all phenomena 
would be alike miraculous. Natural law is God’s 
ordinary method of working; miracles are God’s 
extraordinary method of working. In the one, 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 135 


God uses means; in the other, he acts immedi- 
ately. One who believes in a Supreme Being 
cannot consistently say that the Resurrection was 
impossible. The Agnostic, John Stuart Mill, was 
logical when he said: ‘‘If there is a God, at all, 
of course it is absurd to say that miracles are im- 
possible. ”’ 

Not one person in thousands is an atheist. The 
only ones I have met in ten years were a group 
of garrulous and sophisticated youths in Harvard. 
I shall not stay to reason with that negligible pro- 
portion of people—the atheists. I would affirm 
that no one who believes in a living God can af- 
firm that the Resurrection was an impossibility. 
Surely in this wonderful universe in which science 
has discovered so many long-hidden secrets, and 
seeks yet other mysteries, there is enough to in- 
culcate humility and reverence, to inspire confi- 
dence and faith, and to restrain the thoughtful 
mind from denying the possibility of miracles. 
Indeed, the growing consciousness of the reality 
of yet uncomprehended regions of nature (a re- 
markable feature of the development of modern 
thought) should prepare us to accept the Resur- 
rection. 

2. The Resurrection is incredible. This objec- 
tion overlooks the nature and character of Jesus. 
His pure life, unequaled ideals, and incomparable 
teachings are as exceptional in their realm as is 
his Resurrection. Given such a personality as 
Jesus is universally conceded to have been, his 


136 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Resurrection is easily credible. It was the fitting 
and logical end of the life on earth which before 
or since has had no peer. 

Furthermore, this objection is refuted by the 
fact that the Resurrection has been believed. It 
was believed by the apostles and all who accepted 
their testimony. It was believed by Clement of 
Rome, pupil and companion of Paul, and by Poly- 
carp, disciple of the Apostle John, and the ‘‘last 
witness of the Apostolic Age.’’ It has been be- 
heved by all types of mind from that age to this 
very hour. 

Those of high rank, as well as those of low sta- 
tion, have believed that Jesus rose from the dead. 
Gladstone, the great commoner, and Greenleaf, 
the authority on evidence, believed and defended 
the doctrine. Scholarly and critical minds have 
confessed their belief in this monumental event. 
Counting numbers does not necessarily prove a 
proposition, but when that proposition is that a 
doctrine is incredible, it is pertinent and convinc- 
ing to count numbers. The vast majority of those 
who have carefully investigated the Resurrection 
of Jesus believe that it occurred. 

3. The Resurrection is unnecessary. State the 
situation ina dialogue. Objector: We should have 
Jesus without the Resurrection. Christian: He 
would be a myth; the historical Jesus rose from 
the grave. Objector: The character and life of 
Jesus are, in themselves, sufficient for faith and 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 137 


conduct. Christian: Without the Resurrection the 
character of Jesus is sullied by false claims, and 
his life was a failure. Objector: The ethical 
teaching of Jesus stands independent of the great 
miracle. Christian: But for the Resurrection 
men had never written the Gospels, and we had 
not known the ethics of Jesus. Objector: Elimi- 
nate the miracle and you facilitate faith and mul- 
tiply followers. Christian: Such faith would be 
valueless and such followers useless. 

Objector: You cannot show me how the Resur- 
rection was necessary in the Christian system. 
J think it is an encumbrance. Christian: Every 
time Jesus mentioned his death he predicted his 
Resurrection. His Resurrection verified his 
word and validated his claim. Also, the death 
of Jesus was a colossal tragedy, and the world 
is hopeless unless that death was followed by 
his Resurrection. Objector: I do not believe it. 
Christian: Paul saw it: ‘‘Who was delivered for 
our offenses, and was raised for our justifica- 
tion,’’? Rom. 4:25. Objector: That is Paulinism, 
not Christianity. Christian: Paulinism is the 
Christianity of the Gospels. But I will waive 
that point and demonstrate by Peter that the 
Resurrection was necessary to the lordship of 
Jesus: ‘‘This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof 
we are witnesses. Therefore, let all the house of 
Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that 
Same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord 


138 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


and Christ,’? Acts 2: 32-36. Peter said it was 
through faith in the name of the risen Christ 
that men are made sound (Acts 3:15). 

Objector: Do you mean to say that faith in 
the risen Christ is a condition of being a Chris- 
tian? Christian: That is precisely what the 
Scriptures teach: ‘‘That if thou shalt confess 
with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe 
in thine heart that God hath raised him from 
the dead, thou shalt be saved,’’ Rom. 10:9; ef. 
Rom. 4:24; 8:34 f.; I Cor. 15:1-4; I Thess. 4:14. 
Objector: I cannot see how that is necessary. 
Christian: There were two disciples who did not 
understand how it was necessary for Christ to 
suffer, and to enter into glory, and did not ree- 
ognize the risen Christ because their ‘‘eyes were 
holden.’? But when their eyes were opened they 
believed and bore testimony. Objector: I believe 
in Christianity stripped of the miraculous, of the 
Resurrection. Christian: There would be no 
Christianity without the Resurrection. The cause 
of Jesus collapsed temporarily and the Resurrec- 
tion revived, impassioned and empowered it. 
The Resurrection created the Church and devel- 
oped Christianity. 

4. The Resurrection is unsubstantiated. Even 
if it were scientifically possible, and intellectually 
credible, and logically necessary, say the ob- 
jectors, the Resurrection of Jesus is not substan- 
tiated by evidence. To that objection we now 
address ourselves. Before eliciting the testimony 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 139 


it is advisable to ascertain whether or not it can 
be relied upon; in other words, to show that the 
documents quoted are historical. Before a docu- 
ment can be considered as evidence in a court, its 
genuineness must be proved. 

This is too large a subject to treat comprehen- 
sively in one chapter. That would require a 
volume. However, it is proposed to verify those 
books of the New Testament which specifically 
bear upon the Resurrection of Jesus, to wit: 
J Corinthians, Acts, and the four Gospels. The 
first of these books, if verified, would substan- 
tiate the Resurrection. All of them can be veri- 
fied by proofs as strong as those which can be 
presented for any other equally ancient docu- 
ment outside the New Testament. 

It is worthy of note that all the radical critics 
admit that Paul’s first four Epistles—Romans, 
I and II Corinthians, and Galatians are authentic, 
credible, and evidential. Baur dates them as 
written A.D. 54-58,—a quarter of a century after 
Christ. If Baur could use them as evidence in 
attack, we have equal right to use them in de- 
fense. The fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians 
alone is incontrovertible evidence for the histor- 
ical fact of the resurrection of Jesus. There the 
witnesses are cited. The supreme qualification of 
a witness is that he shall tell the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth. Paul under- 
stands that and boldly states the alternatives: 
‘‘Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; 


140 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


because we have testified of God that he raised 
up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that 
the dead rise not,’? I Cor. 15:15. Jesus -had 
said: ‘‘Ye are my witnesses.’’ The first sermons 
in Acts all witnessed to the resurrection. The 
historical fact of the physical miracle of which 
they were witnesses was the source of their new 
enthusiasm and the substance of their sermons. 

It is also remarkable that the earliest oppo- 
nents of Christianity never denied the antiquity, 
or the authenticity, of the documents under con- 
sideration. On the contrary, they cited them in 
their argument and never cited the apochryphal 
books as having any relevancy to the contro- 
versy. An examination of Hierocles, Porphyry 
and Julian, all adversaries of Christianity, will 
confirm my statement. 

The earliest and ablest of these adversaries 
was Celsus. About the year 150 A.D. he wrote 
a book entitled ‘‘A True Discourse.’’? It has 
perished except as it survives in quotations from 
it, found in Origen’s refutation. Those quota- 
tions contain thirty-three important gospel facts 
concerning Jesus, including the disciples’ claim 
of his Resurrection. It is the irony of history 
that Celsus is a witness to the early existence 
of the four Gospels. His bitter attack became 
the unintentional and inadvertent evidence of the 
historicity of the Evangelists. Three partial cita- 
tions suffice. ‘‘Jesus with his own will expressly 
declared, as you yourselves have recorded... . 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 141 


The disciples of Jesus wrote such accounts re- 
garding him. . . . All these statements are taken 
from: your own books in addition to which we 
need no other witness. .. .’’ These citations are 
made solely for one purpose, viz.: to prove the 
early existence of the written Gospels. The fa- 
vorable and unintentional testimony of an oppo- 
nent carries great weight before a jury and court. 

It remains to enquire: What was the status 
of the four Gospels among the early Christians? 
In the closing part of the second century, they 
were universally received among the Churches. 
He who denies their genuineness must account 
for this. The Churches believed that these Gos- 
pels came down from the four authors whose 
names they bore. It was alleged that their genu- 
ineness had never been disputed by the Churches. 
We place four witnesses on the stand. 

First witness: Q.—What is your name? A.— 
Clement. @.—Where and when were you born? 
A.—At Athens in the year 160 A.D. Q.—What 
opportunities, if any, have you had for knowing 
people and places? A.—I have traveled in Greece, 
Italy, Syria, and Palestine. Q—What is your po- 
sition at present? A.—Head of the Catechetical 
school in Alexandria. @.—Have you investigated, 
and are you familiar with, the four Gospels? A.— 
I have both studied and taught them. Q.—Here is 
a statement (reading from a spurious book) pur- 
porting to come from one of the Gospels. What 
do you know about it? A.—Sir, it is not found 


142 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


‘Sin the four Gospels which have been handed 
down to us.’’ 

Second witness: Q.—Give us your name? A.— 
Tertullian. @—When and where were you born? 
A.—I was born in Carthage in 150 A.D. Q.— 
State something about your ancestry and educa- 
tion. A—My father was a Roman centurion 
under the proconsular government. He gave me 
the advantages of the highest education available. 
I have studied history, philosophy, law, poetry 
and eloquence. Q.—Can you qualify as an expert 
on the credibility of documents purporting to be 
historical? A .—Well, sir, I have made a spe- 
cialty of judicial matters. My opponents say 
my Polemics leave the marks of blood. @.—Have 
you examined carefully the writings which are 
commonly called the four Gospels? A.—I have, 
and have defended the Christian faith before the 
highest authorities of the State. Q—What use 
have you made of those writings? A.—I have 
quoted them frequently as authority for the facts © 
of the Christian religion. @.—How could those 
four writings be used as valid evidences? A.— 
Because ‘‘they were written by apostles, and by 
apostolic men, their companions.’’ I distinctly 
implied that Marcion was acquainted with John’s 
gospel and unjustifiably set it aside because he, 
erroneously, would acknowledge no other than 
Paul. 

Third witness: Q.—State your name and age. 
A.—Irenexus, I was born at Smyrna in 120 A.D. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 143 


Q.—What is your education? A.—I have mas- 
tered the Greek learning, sir, and am fond of 
philosophy. @.—You are an impractical intellec- 
tual, are you? A.—Modesty forbids me to defend 
my ability, sir, but my friends have been good 
enough to commend my common sense. .—Did 
you know an apostle? A.—I did not. I was con- 
verted under Polycarp, who was converted under 
the Apostle John. Q.—What is your present 
position? A.—Pastor of the Church at Lyons, 
Gaul. @Q.—When did you begin your pastorate? 
A.—In the year 178. Q.—Do you know many 
Christians? A.—I know and am known by the 
Churches of Asia Minor, Italy, and Gaul. Q.— 
You stated a moment ago that you knew a man 
who knew an apostle. A.—Yes, sir, I stated that 
I was a disciple of Polycarp and that he was a 
disciple of John. Q.—Ever talk with Polycarp 
about John? A.—Many a time. Q—You mean 
to say that you are but one generation removed 
from the apostles? A.—I say so. Q.—And that 
you were intimate with one who was intimate 
with the last apostle, and that your friend fre- 
quently talked with you about that apostle? 
A.—I do, sir, and I have quoted from every book 
of the New Testament except Philemon and the 
third Epistle of John. 

Q.—That is a remarkable statement, but just 
now you will please confine yourself to what you 
know of the four Gospels. What I am trying to 
get at is who wrote those books. A.—I under- 


144 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


stand your question and am ready to answer it. 
‘‘Matthew also issued a written Gospel among 
the Hebrews. . . . Mark, the disciple and inter- 
preter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writ- 
ing what had been preached by Peter. . . . Luke, 
also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book. 
... Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, 
who also leaned upon his breast, did himself pub- 
lish a Gospel, during his residence in Asia.”’’ 
Q.—Thank you for your explicit answer. Do 
you know anything of the transmission, reception, 
and custody of those writings? A.—I do know 
and shall be happy to answer: ‘‘Which Gospel 
they first preached, and afterwards transmitted 
in writing, that it might be the foundation and 
pillar of Faith’’; ‘‘the Church, though dispersed 
throughout the earth, received from the apostles 
and their disciples this Faith. .. .’’ The Gospel 
and all the elders, who in Asia conferred with 
John, the Lord’s disciple, witness to the effect 
that John delivered these things unto them; for 
he abode until the time of Trajan. And some of 
them saw not only John, but others of the apos- 
tles also, and witness to the aforesaid account. 
Q.—I have heard that you were persuaded that 
there are four true evangelists, and that there 
could be neither more nor less, because there are 
four winds. How about that? A.—I am glad 
you asked that question. My conviction that 
there are but four Gospels is founded on the wit- 
ness given by the churches of my acquaintance 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 145 


and by well-informed individuals whom I know 
personally. By the analogy of the winds, I meant 
that the authority of the four Gospels was as 
well settled as the cosmical system. 

Fourth witness: @.— Your name, if you please? 
A.—Flavius Justin. Q.—You were born when 
and where? A.—In Shechem in 110 A.D. Q.—I 
should like to know something of your youth, if 
it is not embarrassing to you. A.—Not at all. 
My parents were Greeks. In youth I was rest- 
less and traveled extensively. I tried the dif- 
ferent schools of philosophy,—Stoic, Peripatetic, 
and Platonic—but none of these satisfied the 
cravings of my nature. @.—Are you now a pro- 
fessing Christian? A.—I am. Q.—What con- 
vineed you and led you to espouse Christianity? 
A.—A venerable man of benignant countenance 
observed my unsatisfied condition of soul and 
counselled me to study the Hebrew prophets. I 
did so and also investigated the Gospels as to 
the fulfillment of prophecy. I was convinced be- 
fore I was twenty-three. It had been my custom 
to wear a philosopher’s garb. I continued to do 
so after I became a Christian to indicate that I 
had actually found the true philosophy of life. 

@.—It is rather dangerous to be a Christian, 
is it not? A.—Yes, the Roman law against secret 
societies and prohibited religions makes it a 
crime to be a Christian, but I am ready to attest 
my faith by my blood. @.—Have you written 
any books? A.—I wrote an apology in the reign 


146 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


of Antoninus Pius, and another in the reign of 
Marcus Aurelius. I also sought to convert to the 
Christian faith a Jew by the name of Trypho, 
and wrote out the Dialogue between us. @.—Are 
you familiar with four books alleged to be the 
four Gospels? A.—Certainly. The study of 
those books made me a Christian. @.—Have you 
ever referred to these books in any of your writ- 
ings? A.—Sir, I have quoted freely from Mat- 
thew and Luke, have used data found exclusively 
in Mark, and have formulated my doctrinal sys- 
tem in the style, and built it upon the substance, 
of John. @.—dAre those four writings authentic 
and accurate? A.—They are. I appealed to the 
governmental archives in Rome in corroboration 
of the accuracy of the gospel account of the en- 
rollment under Quirinius, their first procurator 
in Judea. I also twice appealed to the accounts 
Pilate transmitted to Tiberius in corroboration 
of the accuracy of the account of the Crucifixion 
and Resurrection. 

Q.—Did you aim at verbal accuracy in your 
. quotations from the four Gospels? A.—Well, I 
quoted freely from memory and had no motive 
to designate carefully what belonged to each 
Kivangelist, but what I said was founded mainly 
upon the four Gospels. Q.—Just what did you 
say, if anything, about the Resurrection? A.—I 
said to Trypho: ‘‘ Jesus expected you to repent 
of your wickedness (in crucifying him) at least 
after he rose from the dead. ... Yet you have 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 147 


not repented after you have learned that he rose 
from the dead. . . . You sent men throughout all 
the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless 
heresy had sprung from one Jesus when you 
know that he has risen from the dead and 
ascended into heaven, as the prophets had fore- 
told that he would.’?’ Q.—You said that to a 
Jew? A.—Yes. Q.—How long after the Cruci- 
fixion? A.—About a hundred years. Q.—Now, 
just what was your authority for using that posi- 
tive and condemnatory language? A.—The four 
Gospels which were in circulation at the time and 
were attested by living witnesses who had known 
their authors. 

We will here rest the case for the genuineness 
of the four Gospels. Other witnesses are ready 
to testify—Papias, Clement of Rome, and Bar- 
nabas. They would take us well into the first 
century, to the time of the Evangelists, and 
would agree substantially with the four witnesses 
who have testified. Is it asked why those who 
wrote the Gospels did not sign their names? The 
reply is that the Evangelists delivered their writ- 
ings to those who were present and it was need- 
less to sign the name; Paul sent his Epistles 
to those who were at a distance, and it was nec- 
essary, in that case, to prefix his name. 

The theory of a late origin of the Gospels did 
not originate from strict historical investigation, 
but was invented to fortify a preconception that 
the divine nature could not have appeared on 


148 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


earth in human form, as is represented in the 
Gospels. The authority best qualified to speak 
upon this question says that the theory has 
ceased to be tenable by any properly trained 
scholar. ‘‘It has been decisively proved that the 
books in question could not have been written 
in the second century.’’ (Ramsay.) 

We have identified the Gospels as documents 
in circulation among the churches, Hast and 
West, at an early date and as being accepted as 
the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 
Hold this clearly in mind, and turn and re-read 
the closing paragraphs in the first four chapters 
of this book. You cannot escape the conviction 
that the disciples believed that Jesus rose from 
the dead. Or, if you are then in doubt, re-read 
the fifth chapter and try to explain Paul, with- 
out the fact of the Resurrection. The sudden 
transformation and subsequent career of Paul 
are an enigma without the Resurrection of Jesus. 
It is more rational to accept the Resurrection 
than it is to reject it and account for Paul. 

As to the alleged discrepancies in the narra- 
tives of the Resurrection, they are not more dif- 
ficult than the truthful testimony of modern wit- 
nesses to one event; the variations evidence inde- 
pendence and the absence of collusion; they all 
agree on the main facts of the Resurrection, that 
there are no rival records in disproof of the facts. 
One wishing to go further in resolving these 
variations in the Evangelists is referred to 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 149 


Simon Greenleaf’s ‘‘Testimony of the Hvange- 
lists,’? West’s ‘‘Observations on the History and 
Evidences of the Resurrection,’’ and Bowman’s 
‘‘Historical Evidences of the New Testament.’’ 
Those books settle the question for all who are 
capable of weighing evidence. 

We turn to the consideration of modern theo- 
ries. Various explanations are offered to get 
rid of this supernatural event. 

1. The swoon theory. This claims that Jesus 
was not actually dead; that he revived in the cool 
atmosphere of the new tomb; that he pushed his 
way out and rejoined his disciples and lived and 
died a natural death. 

This theory raises more difficulties than the 
miracle which it attempts to explain away. (1) 
The record states that when the soldiers came to 
Jesus and the thieves on the cross, Jesus was 
dead already, and the soldiers brake not his legs 
(John 19:33). (2) The same record states that 
a soldier pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, and 
that there came forth blood and water. The 
writer of the record states that he saw this 
(John 19:34). That one wound fully proved 
the death of Jesus. The water flowing through 
the wound indicated that the spear ‘‘had pene- 
trated the pericardium, in which that water is 
lodged, and which being wounded every animal 
must necessarily die immediately.’’ (Gilbert 
West). (3) Pilate made careful inquiry and 
learned that Jesus was dead before he granted 


150 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Joseph of Arimathea permission to take the body 
down from the cross (Mark 15:44f.) (4) The 
weakened physical condition of Jesus, even had 
he not been dead, was such that it was impos- 
sible for him to push away the large stone from 
the tomb with his two hands and to walk away 
on his nail-pierced feet. This would have been 
a supernatural feat. (5) Had he escaped the 
guards, his emaciated presence would have in- 
creased the disciples’ dismay, and could never 
have created in them that faith which was fer- 
vent, fearless and invincible. (6) It was impos- 
sible for him to escape from the tomb and avoid 
the detection of Roman officials and Jewish foes. 
(7) Contemporary Roman historians, Tacitus and 
Pliny, record his death. In short, the swoon 
conjecture of Paulus is impossible and ineredible. 

2. The fraud theory. The Jews, whose malice. 
killed Jesus, originated this story and suborned 
witnesses to testify that the disciples stole the 
body. On its very face are the marks of false- 
hood. The disciples would not have stolen the 
body if they could, and they could not if they 
would. What good could that body have done 
them? They were not trying to prove anything: 
their own faith was in temporary eclipse, and 
they thought the Crucifixion was the tragic end 
of all their hopes. Men in such a state of mind 
would greatly prefer that the body of the lost 
leader should repose in decent burial in Joseph’s 
tomb. 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 151 


Not only their state of mind, but also their 
guileless dispositions, are against the theft 
theory. Then, their whole subsequent careers, 
their moral earnestness, their martyr spirit, and 
denunciation of lying and falsehood would be im- 
possible for conscious deceivers. One must be 
facile in slander who can charge the straightfor- 
ward, undesigning disciples with theft. 

But had the disciples been the worst of men, 
and bent on perpetrating a fraud, they had no 
chance to steal and conceal the body of Jesus. 
Those Roman guards were an armed defense 
through which they could not penetrate; that 
Roman seal was an inviolate protection which 
they dared not break. However, supposing the 
improbable, not to say the impossible, that the 
disciples did steal the body, it would be impos- 
sible for them to conceal that body. Every de- 
tective in Palestine would have been a hound on 
the scent until the body was found. Its presen- 
tation in court or public would have been a death 
blow. Then, indeed, would Christianity have per- 
ished from the earth, or it would be more accu- 
rate to say that Christianity would never have 
been born. The same objections hold against 
Holtsmann’s theory that Joseph of Arimathea 
removed the body. 

3. The mistake theory. The proponents of 
this theory say that Jesus actually died, was 
buried, and his body remained in the tomb. The 
women made a mistake and found the wrong 


152 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


tomb. This does not impute dishonesty, but it 
does impute imbecility; it practically makes fools 
out of the women and Peter and John. 

In all history there is no parallel to such an 
error. Forty-six years after the battle of An- 
tietam, I visited the battlefield with a deacon 
who directed a battery in that engagement. He 
had not been on the field since. Yet, he went 
directly to the very spot where his battery was 
placed. ‘‘Here is the place,’’ he said. Upon in- 
vestigation I found a small bronze slab marking 
that spot as the position of his battery. Being 
asked how he remembered it so well the deacon 
replied: ‘‘There are some places we never for- 
get.’’ 

The Evangelists are particular to state that 
the women knew the exact location of the tomb. 
Matthew has it that while Joseph was interring 
the body, and also after he departed, the women 
were there (27:16); Mark says the women ‘‘be- 
held where he was laid,’’ 23:55; Luke tells that 
the women ‘‘beheld the sepulcher, and how the 
body was laid,’’—Luke 23:55. John informs 
us that the sepulcher was in a garden (19:41), 
not in a cemetery, and therefore, the more easily 
identified. He must have a deep-seated aversion 
for the supernatural, a wild and illogical imagi- 
nation, and a low estimate of the intelligence of 
others, who can, in the face of all the facts, avow 
that ‘‘the women found the wrong tomb.” If 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 153 


such an egregious blunder was ever made in the 
history of man, it is unrecorded. 

4, The vision theory. The disciples were so 
agitated that they thought they saw what they 
did not see. A hysterical woman believed she 
saw and heard Jesus in the garden. Her halluci- 
nation gave to the world ‘‘a resuscitated God.’ 
Others caught the infection and imagined as 
reality what was only a vision. 

This is the only hypothesis, thus far consid- 
ered, that has any plausibility. Sceptics like 
Renan overworked it to explain the appearance 
of Jesus. 

Hixamine the vision theory. It is unbelievable 
for the following reasons: 

(1) In order to make the reaction in the minds 
of the disciples more conceivable, by gaining 
longer time, it violently and unwarrantedly trans- 
fers the first appearances from Jerusalem to 
. Galilee. The facts are that there were five ap- 
pearances on the first day, four in Jerusalem and 
one about seven and a half miles distant. 

(2) It changes every known historical fact,— 
time, place, nature of the events, mood of the 
disciples—and invents scenes, conditions, and 
experiences of which the Gospels know nothing. 
It does not explain the facts in the record; it 
wmagmes a set of facts and undertakes to explain 
them. 

(3) It breaks down on its own ground of the 


154 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


general predisposition to believe in the resurrec- 
tion of heroes, for it cannot cite an example of 
belief in the Resurrection of an historical per- 
sonage such as Jesus was. ‘‘What is found is 
an unwillingness to believe, or to admit, in cer- 
tain cases, for a time, that the hero is really 
dead. The Christian Resurrection is thus a fact 
without historical analogy.’’ (James Orr.) 

(4) It is refuted by the fact that Paul distin- 
guishes the actual sight of Jesus from subsequent 
‘¢visions and revelations’’ (II Cor. 12:1). Paul 
never even repeated the words he heard in a mo- 
ment of ecstasy, in a state of seraphic vision; he 
did say he had seen the risen Jesus and repeated 
what was said to him. 

(5) The vision theory fails for want of a psy- 
chological basis. No good cause is found, in a 
psychological analysis, for the marvelous and 
simultaneous outburst of visionary experience 
among so many in different places during forty 
days, or for the early and sudden cessation of 
the appearances. 

(6) It fails, finally, because it cannot be har- 
monized with the historical situation. Take an 
example; the state of the disciples’ minds before 
and after the Crucifixion. They were dejected and 
despondent, not looking for an appearance, not 
expecting anything, and unwilling to believe what 
they first saw. After the forty days, they were 
buoyant and confident, and hazarded their lib- 
erty and lives for the witness which they bore 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 155 


to the Resurrection. Philosophically, it is diffi- 
cult to understand how overexcitement, issuing 
in visions, could have preceded immediately and 
produced the calm self-possession and the energy 
of the disciples, or could have created Chris- 
tianity with its ‘‘lucidity of thought and earnest- 
ness of moral activity.’’ 

Further, the special view of this theory ad- 
vanced by Keim, viz.: that Jesus, risen in spirit, 
actually vouchsafed visions of himself to the dis- 
ciples and so produced in them the conviction 
that he had risen in body, makes Jesus respon- 
sible for a gross deception. That is ethically 
impossible. 

©). The subconsciousness theory. There is a 
subtle difference between this and the vision 
theory. It is more reverent than Renan and has 
a psychological basis. If there is no objective 
reality in what does not appeal to subjective con- 
sciousness, subjective realization is essential to 
objective reality. Also, subjective consciousness 
may give form and color to the formless and 
colorless. For instance, there is, scientifically 
speaking, no such thing as color in the ether 
waves; subjective consciousness gives color to 
those waves. 

Applied to the Resurrection it would mean 
this; there was no bodily presence, no objective 
reality of Jesus, except in the sub-consciousness 
of the disciples. Thus, the objector to the super- 
natural would dispose of the bodily Resurrection 


156 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


of Jesus, and at the same time guard the sin- 
eerity and intelligence of the disciples and ac- 
count for the tremendous and beneficent results 
which were the outcome of belief in the Resur- 
rection. 

By way of rejoinder to this theory: 

(1) It is too metaphysical to be practical. 
Telling people there are per se no colors in the 
rainbow appears vastly more fanciful and foolish 
than all their iridescent dreams. Since before 
the flood, man has believed in the reality of color, 
and doubtless will continue to do so. The eye 
will feast upon the landscape and the ear will 
thrill to the symphony, and man will enjoy 
beauties and harmonies so long as he can see and 
hear. 

(2) It invalidates the laws of evidence. The 
Resurrection is a question of fact to be estab- 
lished by evidence. Over five hundred witnesses, 
under a variety of circumstances, testify that 
they saw the risen Jesus. They testify that they 
saw him at a distance, but oftener close at hand; 
saw him as individuals, but oftener in groups; 
saw him in the light of the early morning, in the 
brightness of the noonday sun, in the twilight of 
the afternoon, and in the cover of night; saw him 
in the garden, on the highway, by the seaside, on 
the mountain, in the country, in the city, in the 
house and in the open outdoors; and saw him in 
the intimacies of personal fellowship. 

Deny the objective reality and substitute the 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 157 


subjective consciousness and you violate every 
known rule of legal evidence and reduce all 
trials and all life to absurdity. A man charged 
with arson, but who did not commit the crime, 
could be convicted on the testimony of witnesses 
whose subconsciousness told them he burned the 
house. There may have been no fire, no objec- 
tive reality, but only their subconsciousness. In- 
deed, there is no such thing as fire, according 
to this theory. The whole theory can be dis- 
proved by the subconscious psychologist putting 
his hand in the fire. 

(3) It rejects the testimony of the senses. The 
disciples by the senses of sight, touch and hear- 
ing, vouched for the bodily Resurrection of Jesus. 
What they thought they saw they confirmed by 
touch, and his voice their ears heard. 

But these senses are not to be relied upon, ac- 
cording to the subconscious theory. There was 
no objective reality, no actual sight, touch and 
hearing of an outside object; there was merely 
that mysterious something within them which 
made them believe in objective reality. 

See where this theory would lead; I think that 
I have a daughter, that we resemble each other 
in features, in the habit of promptness, and in 
some other respects; that we love each other and 
that she fills a large place in my life. But my 
daughter has no bodily presence, no objective 
reality, she exists only in my subconsciousness. 
To such absurdities does this theory lead! 


158 - THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


The knowledge based upon the facts of the 
Resurrection leads to this truth; there were both 
an objective reality,—the body of Jesus,—and a 
subjective consciousness,—the personal experience 
of that reality by the disciples. 

6. The spiritual theory. Radical pulpits are 
heard to this effect: Christ’s Resurrection was 
wholly spiritual, a continuous manifestation of 
himself; his personality survived the cross and 
manifested itself to the minds of the disciples. 
They were spiritual yet real manifestations, 
‘‘telegrams from heaven,’’ assuring them that he 
still lived and laying a firm foundation for belief 
in immortality. Psychical research is thought to 
offer support for this theory in the data collected 
on apparitions of the dead. It is insisted, by its 
advocates, that the objectionable features of the 
orthodox theory are removed and faith’s fortress 
saved. 

This theory is untenable for obvious reasons: 

(1) Psychical apparition is not an explanation 
of the Resurrection as Apostolic Christianity 
understood it, but a substitute ‘‘which is in prin- 
ciple a negation of Apostolic affirmation.’’ 

(2) Assuming that Jesus was on earth a spir- 
itual personality wedded to a material body, we 
must believe, according to Sir Oliver Lodge, 
‘that the connection between spirit and body is 
more than temporary. In essence it is perma- 
nent.’’ 

(3) The rising of Christ from the dead does 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 159 


not rest upon the elusive, precarious, and often 
misleading data of modern psychical phenomena. 

(4) Christ’s prediction was false in the light 
of this theory, for he predicted that his body 
would rise: ‘‘Destroy this temple, and in three 
days I will raise it up,’’ John 2:19. 

(5) The documentary evidence proves that the 
risen Jesus had a body: ‘‘Behold my hands and 
my feet that it is I myself; handle me and see; 
for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
me have. And when he said this, he shewed them 
his hands and his feet,’’ Luke 24:40. That is 
the account of a learned physician. Obviously, 
the disciples at first thought it was an appari- 
tion, that the manifestation was wholly spiritual, 
and Jesus corrected their mistaken ideas. The 
women also held him by the feet (Matt. 28:29), 
and he forbade Mary, to keep clinging to him,— 
meaning of the Greek (John 20:16). What na- 
ture of body he had, we shall see later; but he 
had a body. 

(6) Paul builds the hope of immortality upon 
the Resurrection of the body of Jesus and argues 
the resurrection of our bodies from the proposi- 
tion that Christ’s body was raised (I Cor. 15). 
The believer’s expectation is that Christ ‘‘shall 
change our vile body that it may be fashioned 
like unto his glorious body,’’ Phil. 3:21. 

(7) The final and sufficient answer to the spir- 
itual Resurrection, and to every other false 
theory, is the empty tomb. More eloquent than 


160 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


speech, more convincing than logic, is that empty 
tomb outside the city gate. 

By way of recapitulation, we have seen: that 
the Resurrection is the palladium of Christianity, 
—the fundamental and essential doctrine and the 
apex of supernaturalism; that the documentary 
evidence relied upon to support the fact is gen- 
uine and trustworthy; that the several objections 
to the doctrine are swept away by the force of 
reason and the power of truth; that all attempted 
explanations, in conflict with the orthodox view, 
fail to explain, and must be rejected; and that the 
Resurrection is substantiated by the strongest 
circumstantial, and by the most positive and 
direct, evidence. 

We shall now see the significance of the Res- 
urrection of Jesus: 

1. It demonstrates his deity. The Resurrec- 
tion confirmed his truthfulness, proved his claims, 
and vindicated his character. ‘‘He was declared 
to be the Son of God with power, by the Resur- 
rection from the dead.”’ 

2. It demonstrates the completion of redemp- 
tion. The Resurrection was not only an eviden- 
tial fact for deity; it was a constitutive element 
of the gospel. Jesus died as a means of salva- 
tion to the world (Matt. 20:28; 26: 26-28; John 
3:14-16; Rom. 5:6; I Pet. 2:24). But had he 
remained permanently in the state of death, he 
could not have redeemed the world. It is clear 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 161 


from the historical situation that not a gospel 
sermon would have been preached. The work of 
redemption was completed in the Resurrection. 
God thus publicly accepted the death of Jesus as 
the basis of reconciliation. Death plus Resurrec- 
tion equals perfected redemption. ‘‘When he 
had made purification for sins he sat down on 
the right hand of the Majesty on high,’’ Heb. 
Prone 10. Lohtoe Acts 2voo%3: Kom, 6:10). 

3. It demonstrates that Jesus lives with and 
in his people. He had said he would be with 
them. Could he keep that promise? The Resur- 
rection and Pentecost and Apostolic missions are 
the answer. He had said we live in him as the 
branch lives in the vine. But if the vine be dead, 
so is the branch. A dead branch may be found 
on a live vine, but not a live branch on a dead 
vine. This vital union of the believer with 
Christ becomes more precious after the Resur- 
rection (Rom. 6:3-11). The believer is risen 
with Christ (Col. 3:1), and the Christian life is 
the outliving of the inliving Christ (Gal. 2:20). 
In our inmost souls we have felt his living pres- 
ence. Our experience attests the Resurrection. 

4, It demonstrates the existence of a future 
life. Mankind has always wondered about the 
future life. Philosophers had speculated, saints 
had hoped, and prophets had intimated. There 
was reason to conclude that this life was not a 
term complete in itself, but a passage to a larger 


162 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


life. What was needed was a demonstration of 
that larger life; we have it in the Resurrection of 
Jesus. 

do. It demonstrates the identity of personality 
after death. The risen body of Jesus was the 
same as before, and yet not the same. The wounds 
were there, and yet he was free from the former 
material conditions. The flesh had not decayed; 
it had been transformed. The temporary ethe- 
realization of the Transfiguration on the mount 
became permanent in the Resurrection. The body 
of his humiliation had become the body of his 
glory, and his disciples identified him as the same 
Jesus they had known before. 

6. It demonstrates the ultimate triumph of the 
Christian. Jesus’ victory was our victory, if we 
believe in him. His own word for that is: ‘‘Be- 
cause I live, ye shall live also,’’ John 14:20. The 
body of his glory is the type of our resurrection 
bodies. ‘‘For if we have been planted together 
in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in 
the likeness of his resurrection,’’? Rom. 6:5. 

The material particles of our flesh, unlike that 
of Jesus, will return unto dust; there will be no 
continuation of this body; as a physical body, it 
will distintegrate and disappear. That will not be 
the end of us. There is coming a day of transfor- 
mation ‘‘that mortality might be swallowed up of 
life,’’? II Cor. 5:4. ‘‘It is sown a natural body, 
it is raised a spiritual body,’’ I Cor. 15:44. This 
indicates at once identity and difference. Do you 


THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS 163 


ask an explanation of the relation between the 
body you now have and the body you shall have 
in the resurrection? It is a mystery: ‘‘ Behold, L 
show you a mystery.’’ A mystery can be an- 
nounced and accepted, it cannot be explained. 
The other day in the Philosophy Class at Prince- 
ton I heard Professor Spaulding say that we do 
not know, and we cannot explain, the method by 
which the sun pulls the earth; but it pulls and 
we live under that law of gravitation. In like 
manner we accept the mystery of a change of a 
natural to a spiritual body as a coming event pre- 
figured in the Resurrection though we cannot 
understand it. 

Enough to say, we shall be like the first fruits, 
—Jesus was the first fruits. Life fashioned the 
bodies we now wear; the risen Christ shall ‘‘fash- 
ion anew’’ our bodies so as to conform to the 
body of his glory. Do you ask how? It is writ- 
ten: ‘‘According to the working whereby he is 
able even to subdue all things unto himself,’’ Phil. 
3:21. Do you ask when? It is written: ‘‘When 
Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall 
ye also appear with him in glory,’’ Col. 3:4. 


Vill 
THE DEITY OF CHRIST 


The waters are troubled. A severe storm agi- 
tates the scientific ocean and shakes the ship of 
many an educational institution. Some have been 
made seasick and many have the uncomfortable 
feeling which often precedes nautical nausea. 
Others, old sea travelers, are undisturbed; they 
sit steadily in the boat, confident she will reach 
her destined port without serious injury or great 
loss of valuable cargo. Others are in glee over 
the storm; they believe it is conducive to health— 
it eliminates the bile and tones up the constitu- 
tion. 

While this storm is raging a hurricane strikes 
the ship. Shall we say from another direction? 
Or does it come from the same direction? An 
Hpiscopalian clergyman affirms that Jesus did not 
have the power of God; his bishop hesitates to 
subject him to discipline because his statements 
are ‘‘ambiguous’’; an editor of the Southern 
Churchman espouses the cause of the first rector 
and criticizes the bishop for the manner in which 
the bishop addressed him; another clergyman 
challenges the bishop to state his own views; and 
a Jewish rabbi indorses the first-mentioned rector 


and proposes Judaism as a basis of union. That 
164 


THE DEITY OF CHRIST 165 


is a swirling hurricane, isitnot? Itis, in Shairp’s 
fine phrase, ‘‘a sea of doubt raging wildly round 
about.”’ 

Whither are we drifting? Let us take our 
bearings, consult our chart. Was Jesus more than 
man,—the highest type of man? Was he the 
unique Son of God? 

In the Synoptists others applied to Jesus the 
term ‘‘Son of God.’’? Luke used that name be- 
cause Jesus’ human nature was the special crea- 
tive act of God, Luke 1:35. Even the demons rec- 
ognized Jesus’ deity and dreaded ‘‘the Son of 
God,’’ Matthew 8:29. Peter made the confession, 
‘‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’’; 
and Jesus accepted and commended the confes- 
sion, Matthew 16:16. Before the Sanhedrin 
Jesus’ affirmative answer to the question as to 
whether he was the Son of God, so angered the 
Jews that they instantly charged him with blas- 
phemy. However much the critics may whittle 
down or explain away the reply of Jesus, the 
Jews who heard him understood him to say he 
was God, Luke 22: 66-71. 

There is among certain schools an antipathy to 
the Johannine theology. Any quotation from 
John’s theology is rejected at once. So, for argu- 
ment’s sake, I will omit, in this connection, any of 
John’s strictly theological statements and confine 
the quotations to two of his historical testimonies. 
‘‘Therefore the Jews sought to kill him, because 
he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said that 


166 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


God was his Father, making himself equal with 
God,’’ John 5:18. ‘‘Kqual with God.’’ That is 
not taken from ‘‘outworn creeds.’’ It is in the 
inspired creed, the one to which Baptists have al- 
ways subscribed. What new and larger interpre- 
tation can be as authentic as the testimony of those 
who heard the Master’s words fall from his lips 
and were eyewitnesses of his works? 

The Jews utterly rejected the stupendous claims 
of Jesus, but they were not so stupid as to miss 
their significance. In their wrath they were too 
honest to say he did not claim deity. ‘‘The Jews 
answered him saying, For a good work we stone 
thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that 
thou, being a man, makest thyself God,’’ John 
10:33. They knew what blasphemy meant. To 
their minds Jesus was a blasphemer because he 
said he was God. No ambiguity there! This 
should settle the question of whether Jesus 
claimed to be more than a good man or a prophet. 
It creates the dilemma: Jesus was either more 
than a good man and a prophet, or he was neither 
a good man nor a prophet. As Anselm stated it: 
‘*He is either God, or not a good man.’’ 

Again, the supernatural personality of Jesus 
was the cause of his death. Had he been no more 
than human, the Jews would not have killed him. 
They slew him because he professed to be God. 
Now, an important rabbi denies both facts; that 
the Jews slew Jesus and that Jesus claimed deity. 
Within two months after the crucifixion of Christ, 


~ 


THE DEITY OF CHRIST 167 


Peter told the Jews of their crime to their face: 
‘Ye have taken, and by wicked hands have cruci- 
fied and slain.’’? He also in the same address, 
proved the proposition that Jesus was the Mes- 
siah: ‘‘God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye 
have crucified, both Lord and Christ,’’ Acts 2: 23, 
36. Rational people, accepting this record cannot 
consider Jesus simply a martyr. He was either a 
criminal and deserved capital punishment under 
the law, or he was the suffering servant of Isaiah, 
the Old Testament Messiah, by whose stripes we 
are healed. 

Anent religious persecution: I belong to a de- 
nomination which has never shed any blood, ex- 
cept its own, for conscience’ sake. In the interest 
of historical accuracy, and not to keep alive re- 
ligious antipathies, it must be stated that the Jews 
were the instigators of persecution between Jews 
and Christians. Their hate knew no bounds when 
they had power. Their champion should be care- 
ful in laying charges of persecution at the door of 
Christians. Let him state the whole truth. 

It is significant that Jesus always distinguishes 
his own relation to God from the relation of others 
to God. He speaks of ‘‘my Father’’ and of ‘‘your 
Father,’’ but never includes himself in the expres- 
sion, ‘‘our Father.’? You must face that fact in 
the Gospels. It clearly substantiates his unique 
sonship. He and those who wrote the record, 
knew that his sonship differed from that of others. 

The exalted place occupied by Jesus in the New 


168 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Testament is that which he himself took. This is 
the very thing which gives unity to the book. His 
subsequent followers have never, in sermon or 
creed, attributed more to him than he claimed 
and his inspired apostles believed. 

Solomon was wise and great, but ‘‘a greater 
than Solomon was here,’’ Matthew 1% 42. Once 
Jesus demanded of the scribes whose son the Mes- 
siah was. They replied: ‘‘David’s.’’? Jesus then 
asked why David called him Lord, Mark 14 35-37. 
Jesus meant that he, the Messiah, was the son of 
God in such a sense that the greatest of the He- 
brew Kings called him ‘‘Lord.’’ The Pharisees 
disbelieved but ‘‘the common people heard him 
gladly.’’ Their common sense was impressed by 
the sincerity of the Master. In the same connec- 
tion Jesus said: ‘‘Beware of the scribes.’’? To- 
day the common people are loyal to the deity of 
our Lord. They wait upon a ministry where his 
deity is honored. Alas! we must repeat the warn- 
ing, ‘‘Beware of the scribes.’’ 

The four evangelists all ascribed to Jesus mir- 
aculous powers. He opened the eyes of the blind, 
unstopped the ears of the deaf, healed the sick, 
raised the dead. That distinguished Jewish 
scholar, Edersheim, whose open mind to the truth 
led him to Christ, has aptly said: ‘‘If he be not 
the Messiah, he has at least thus far done the 
Messiah’s works. If he be not the Messiah, the 
world has not, and never can have a Messiah.”’ I 
believe that any Jew who will divest himself of 


THE DEITY OF CHRIST 169 


his prejudice and read with truth-seeking purpose 
“The Life and Times of Jesus’? by Edersheim, 
will be convinced that Jesus was the Christ. 

History presents many contrasts. One night, 
long ago, a scholarly and influential Jew came to 
Jesus and said, ‘‘We know that thou art a teacher 
come from God; for no man can do these miracles 
that thou doest except God be with him.’’ That 
is, he was so impressed by the miracles of Christ 
that he wanted to join him. One night recently, 
a modern Jew denied the miracles of Jesus and 
intimated that Christians unite with Jews on that 
basis. One lived in the time of Christ and knew; 
the other lives in a time when he has abandoned 
all hope of a Messiah, denied the miraculous and 
wrapped himself in the garment of doubt. 

Did Jesus have the power of God? He said so. 
His own words are, ‘‘All power is given unto me 
in heaven and in earth.’’ Vested with that au- 
thority, he gave a command which was fool- 
hearted for any one but God to give. In that com- 
mand, he announced a formula which placed the 
Son and Holy Spirit on equality with the Father. 
Prior to this, he had said, ‘‘I and the Father are 
one.’’? If they were one, Jesus not only had the 
power of God, but was God. To that effect is his 
statement to Philip, ‘‘He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father.’’ 

Not only did Jesus profess to have all power. 
The apostles affirmed that the power in which they 
wrought miracles came from Christ. ‘‘Atuneas, 


170 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Jesus maketh thee whole; arise and make thy 
bed,’’ Acts 9:33. Peter had previously disclaimed 
superior power or holiness in himself and ascribed 
the glory to Jesus, the Prince of Life. ‘‘And his 
name through faith in his name hath made this 
man strong,’’ Acts 3:16. | 

Consider Jesus. He comes forward as the su- 
preme and final Revealer of truth, superior to 
the scribes and even to Moses. He hesitates not 
before the most intricate moral questions. He is 
familiar with the scenery of the other world. He 
came from God, returns to God, knows perfectly 
the will of God, is ‘‘the way, the truth, and the 
life.’? 

He insisted upon absolute obedience to himself 
as the Sovereign of the conscience and the Savior 
of the soul. He called to men, ‘‘Follow me.’’ He 
bade them ‘‘let the dead bury their dead.’’ He 
declared the ‘‘Son of man hath power on earth to 
forgive sins.’? He warned men that their eternal 
destiny would depend upon their attitude to him. 
He announced penalties and rewards which would 
be endured or received beyond the grave. No 
other character in history impinged such vital is- 
Sues upon his own person. 

He lived a life of sinlessness, unselfishness, 
service, sacrifice, love. You can name no other 
to match him in this respect, his enemies being the 
Judges. Should God come to-day and dwell among 
men, we can have no higher conceptions of his 
conduct than that exhibited by Jesus. 


THE DEITY OF CHRIST 171 


He calmly gave commands and promised powers 
becoming none but Deity. His disciples obeyed 
those commands, experienced the fulfillment of 
those promises and grew shortly to be the strong- 
est force in the world. Their deeds validated the 
authority of their commander. The growth of 
his spiritual empire justified his largest predic- 
tion. 

That the God-Man is a mystery is frankly con- 
ceded. This does not discredit the fact. Man is 
a mystery to himself. He has a physical power,— 
body; a thinking power,—mind; a loving power, 
—heart, united in himself; each capable of indi- 
vidual activity, and yet all making one man. He 
cannot penetrate this mystery, but he acts daily 
upon the fact. Man’s complexity is a perplexity 
which he accepts. Is it consistent, is it reason- 
able, to reject the fact of Christ’s complex person 
because one has no philosophy for the fact? Be 
as logical as Browning: 


**T say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by the reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
Wouldst thou disprove this to reprove the 
proved?’’ 


Who then was Jesus? What say the witnesses? 
Demons from below cry out, ‘‘Son of God’’; the 
Father from the bending heavens speaks, ‘‘My 
belovéd Son in whom I am well pleased’’; the 


172 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Samaritans, who doubted the woman, heard him 
and added, ‘‘We know that this is indeed the 
Christ, the Savior of the world’’; the traitor, who 
sold him wails ‘‘innocent’’; Pilate, who tried him, 
renders the verdict, ‘‘I find no fault in him’’; the 
centurion who superintended the execution wit- 
nesses, ‘‘‘Truly this man was the Son of God’’; 
Thomas, who had been perplexed, exclaims, ‘‘My 
Lord and my God’’; Paul, who fought him, testi- 
fies, ‘‘The image of the invisible God,’’ ‘‘Equal 
with God’’; Peter writes of him, ‘‘Who is gone 
into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; 
angels and authorities and powers being subject 
unto him’’; the unknown author of Hebrews be- 
gins, ‘‘God, who at sundry times and in divers 
manners spake in times past unto the fathers by 
the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto 
us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of 
all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who 
being the brightness of his glory, and the express 
image of his person, and upholding all things by 
the word of his power, when he had by himself 
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of 
the Majesty on high’’; John, who felt his heart 
beat, says, ‘‘The word was with God and the word 
was God. The same was in the beginning with 
God. All things were made by him and without 
him was not anything made that was made. In 
him was life, and the life was the light of men. 
... And the word was made flesh and dwelt 
among us (and we beheld his glory, glory as of 


THE DEITY OF CHRIST 173 


the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and 
(Aga hae edy 

What say ye? Have the believing heart. This 
is essential to the discovery and retention of sav- 
ing truth,—perhaps of all truth. When the deity 
of our Savior is being assailed, and perchance 
mists of doubt momentarily obscure your vision of 
the Sun of Righteousness, be guided by Tenny- 
son’s protest in ‘‘In Memoriam”’: 


‘<Tf e’er when faith had fallen asleep 
I heard a voice, ‘Believe no more,’ 
And heard an ever breaking shore 

That tumbled in the godless deep; 


‘A warmth within the breast would melt 
The freezing reason’s colder part 
And like a man in wrath, the heart 

Stood up and answered, ‘I have felt.’ ”’ 


IX 
THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 


A third of a century ago a brilliant orator was 
lecturing upon the American platform on ‘‘The 
Mistakes of Moses.’’ ‘Thoughtful hearers com- 
mented that the lecture was notable more for rid- 
icule than for logic, and it is now evident that 
the mistakes attributed to Moses were mostly the 
mistakes of the highly paid speaker. 

The Modernists have said enough of recent 
months for one to express a frank judgment upon 
them. It would not be considerate to intimate that 
any of them have courted notoriety, but in utmost 
charity one may say they have no cause to com- 
plain of a lack of newspaper publicity. Much of 
it fills us with chagrin. We read hasty words 
from ministers of the gospel whose responsibili- 
ties, if not their years, should sober them. Some 
amateurs in controversy are rushing in with 
threatening and defiance. They appear as im- 
petuous boys exclaiming: ‘‘I dare vou! If you do 
this I’ll do that!’’ All of which gets us nowhere. 
The judgment which I express is that they are 
making egregious blunders. 

They are mistaken in supposing that the pro- 
found thinkers must be Modernists. It ill becomes 


one to cast a reflection upon the intelligence of — 


174 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 175 


those whose opinions differ from his own. Yet, 

running through the utterances of the Modernists 
is the implication that those who do not agree © 
with them are not thinkers. They do not demon- © 
strate their assumed intellectual superiority; they — 
simply assert, or imply, the inferiority of others. | 

Conceit is not a trait of the highest Christian | 
intelligence; modesty is. Disdain of another’s | 
ability is not a Christian virtue; consideration is. 
Anyway, the real thinker does not boast or belit- 
tle. He knows that wisdom is justified of her chil- 
dren. He goes on his way thinking his thoughts, 
voicing his views, wishing that nothing but the 
truth may prevail, and trusting the intelligence 
of the people to sift the chaff of error from the 
wheat of truth. The intelligence of the masses of 
Christians is higher than the Modernists sup- 
pose. Among the conservatives are men not one 
whit behind the Modernists in the power of con- 
centration, in mental acumen, in technical schol- 
arship, in intellectual honesty. Wisdom will not 
die with the Modernists. 

A distinction should be made between the 
thinker and the scholar. There be men who are 
in no sense scholars but who are deep thinkers. 
They may be laborers in factories, blacksmiths 
at the forge, farmers remote from universities— 
men endowed with massive minds, men who have 
brooded long upon the great questions of origin 
and destiny, divine sovereignty and free will, na- 
ture and revelation. Indeed, the most original 


176 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


mind I ever knew was that of a man who never 
attended college. He was a devout believer in the 
supernatural; had the child-like faith which Jesus 
commended. 

Another mistake of the Modernists is in sup- 
posing that they have a monopoly of the best 
scholarship. Their claims of scholarship are bold; 
_ their proofs are invalid. Such is their intellectual 
arrogancy that they have denied the scholarship 
of the Episcopal Bishops who do not agree with 
them, that is, an overwhelming majority of the 
Bishops. It had been my impression that the 
Bishops of those denominations who have 
the special office represented the best in those de- 
nominations; in character, piety, common sense, 
scholarship and general ability. Heretofore, we 
have thought they were chosen for the office be- 
cause they possessed those qualifications. Now 
we are told they are administrators but not schol- 
ars. That is the Modernist method of answering 
the conservatism of the Bishops; no proof, simply 
an unwarranted, and I believe unjust, assertion. 

But apart from the Bishops whose scholarship 
is now challenged by rectors of whom we never 
heard before; what have these rectors with which 
to impeach the scholarship of Richard Chenevix 
French, who hurled back the assaults on the mir- 
acles and vindicated the supernatural in the Gos- 
pels; Alexander Balmain Bruce, professor of 
Apologetics in Glasgow, who accepted and ex- 


pounded the miraculous element in the Gospels; 


Se a ae 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 177 


Ira M. Price of the University of Chicago, whose 
ample testimony from the monuments, all cor- 
roborate the Bible; George P. Fisher of Yale Uni- 
versity, whose scholarly work on ‘‘The Grounds 
of Theistic and Christian Belief’’ stands like a 
Gibraltar against the pop-gun shots of radicals; 
Francis Smith, distinguished scientist of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, whose book, ‘‘Christ and 
Science’? proves as supernatural a Christ as the 
most orthodox could claim; J. Gresham Machen 
of Princeton Theological Seminary, whose lec- 
tures in the city of Richmond would convince any 
unbiased scholar that the supernatural Jesus of 
the Gospels was the source of Paul’s doctrine of 
redemption; David Smith, whose large and schol- 
arly volume, ‘‘The Days of His Flesh,’’ estab- 
lishes the fact that the Christ of the conservatives 
is the Christ of the Scriptures; Sir William Ram- 
say, whose superb scholarship was devoted to in- 
vestigating the accuracy of Luke and Paul and 
who confirmed them in every disputed issue; 8. L. 
Bowman whose monumental volume on ‘‘ Histor- 
ical Evidence of the New Testament’’ perhaps no 
Modernist has read and no one can refute; and 
A. T. Robertson’s ‘‘Luke the Historian in the 
Light of Research’’ which demonstrates that the 
eritics are wrong and Luke is right in the birth- 
story and every other particular. These are schol- 
ars whom the Modernists would be proud to claim. 
They are unable to disqualify these scholars or 
to answer them. 


178 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


Again, the Modernists are mistaken in suppos- 
ing that the virgin birth was not believed by 
Christians from the beginning. One of them de- 
clared a while ago that it was a dogma ‘‘clamped 
upon the Church in the Dark Ages.’’ That is 
surely a reckless statement without any historical 
support whatever. One to make it might be con- 
victed of living in ‘‘dark ages.’’? The virgin birth 
is in the Apostles’ Creed. Adolf Hamack has 
shown that the Apostles’ Creed ‘‘can, in its pres- 
ent form, be traced back with certainty to the be- 
ginning of the sixth or the end of the fifth cen- 
tury.’’? It existed in a somewhat different form 
before the beginning of the Dark Ages, the fall 
of Rome (476). In every form in which it existed 
it contained the doctrine of the virgin birth. The 
Council of Nicea antedated the fall of Rome one 
hundred and fifty-one years. That Council un- 
equivocally affirmed the doctrine of the eternal 
deity of Christ in these words: ‘‘We believe in 
one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, be- 
gotten of the Father, the only begotten, of the 
essence of the Father, God of God, very God of 
very God, begotten, not made, being of one sub- 
stance with the Father, by whom all things were 
made in heaven and on earth; who for us men, 
and for our salvation, came down and was incar- 
nate, and was made man.’’ This was in the year 
325. It is indisputable as to date and contents. 
How can a man who preaches to an intelligent 
congregation, which believes in a creed, have the 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 179 


effrontery to locate the origin of that article of 
their creed in the Dark Ages? And he prates 
about scholarship! His fellow denominationalists 
may well blush, and many of them do. 

The fact is that this doctrine was held by post- 
apostolic Christians long before there were any 
church councils or creeds. Ignatius of Antioch, 
said about the year 110: ‘‘He was truly of the 
race of David according to the flesh, but the Son 
of God by Divine will and power, truly born of a 
virgin.”’? Celsus, a Greek philosopher, wrote a 
book aginst Christianity about the year 178. His 
testimony evidences, by its opposition, what was 
the settled faith of the early Christians. He ridi- 
cules them for believing and teaching the incarna- 
tion by means of the virgin birth. He specifically 
refers to Joseph’s dream and to the genealogies 
of Matthew and Luke. Concessions made by an 
enemy are important in historical investigation. 
The difference between Celsus and the Modernists 
is that while they both deny the miraculous con- 
ception, Celsus admitted that it was taught in 
Matthew and Luke and believed by the Christians 
in the first century after Christ. The Modernists 
would say with Celsus: ‘‘What need was there to 
breathe into the womb of a woman?’’ Let them 
also concede with Celsus that the earliest Chris- 
tian faith believed that as a fact, and then frankly 
admit that they depart from the faith. Let them 
not try to have others believe they represent the 
faith and facts of early Christianity. Let them 


180 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


acquire the scholarship and candor of the liberal 
and somewhat radical Hastings’ Dictionary when 
it says: ‘‘Indeed, the wide-spread belief of the 
early Church in the Virgin Birth can be reason- 
ably accounted for only by the occurrence of the 
fact itself.’’ Let us say with the same great book: 
‘‘Supernatural conception appears a really befit- 
ting and credible preface to a life which was 
crowned by resurrection from the dead.’’ 

Again, the Modernists are mistaken in suppos- 
ing that they have discovered any new truth. The 
only thing new is the historical anacronisms which 
some of them perpetrate upon the public. Cer- 
tainly their views of Jesus are not new. Their 
human Jesus is no discovery of modern research. 
The French skeptics and the German critics have 
said what they are saying, and said it better. 
The Ebionites, before the close of the first cen- 
tury, denied the reality of Christ’s divine nature 
and held him to be merely a man. The Arians, 
who were condemned at Nicea in Bithynia, denied 
the integrity of the divine nature in Christ and 
regarded him as the first and highest of created 
beings. The Nestorians denied the real union be- 
tween the divine and the human natures in Christ, 
making it a moral rather than an organic one; 
and Nestorius was removed from the Patriarchate 
of Constantinople for his heretical theory in 431. 
There was then more discipline for false doctrine 
than now. In short, the Modernists are rehashing 
old views about Jesus—views which are incom- 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 181 


patible with the Gospels, which have never been 
accepted by a majority of Christians, and for 
which men have been disfellowshiped. 

The orthodox view is that of the New Testa- 
ment, viz.: that in Jesus Christ there are two na- 
tures, a human nature and a divine nature, and 
that you cannot divide the person or confound the 
natures. This is at once a divine revelation and 
an inscrutable mystery. The New Testament says 
as much: ‘‘ Without controversy great is the mys- 
tery of godliness: God was manifested in the 
flesh.’’ Mystery is no disproof of reality, no bar- 
rier to faith. It is evidence of reality and invita- 
tion to faith. 


‘‘Strong Son of God, immortal love, 
Whom we, who have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing where we cannot prove. 


‘<Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood thou; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours to make them thine.”’ 


Still another mistake of the Modernists is in 
supposing that their theory is workable. The 
proof of the pudding is in the eating; some have 
eaten the Modernist pudding and have been made 
very sick. The tree is judged by its fruits. If 
Modernism is what its advocates claim, the re- 
sults should appear in churches where it is 


182 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


preached. On a recent Sunday I preached in 
Tremont Temple, Boston, and the Lord’s Supper 
was observed at the close of the service. More 
than 1,300 people partook of the Supper. The 
Pulpit at Tremont Temple gives forth no uncer- 
tain sound. It has always been loyal to the Su- 
pernatural Jesus. On the way to the hotel from 
the Temple I passed by King’s Chapel, the 
oldest Unitarian Church in the United States, 
and one highly endowed. They observe the Hpis- 
copal forms and were partaking of the Lord’s 
Supper. A count showed forty persons present. 
Judged by the attendance upon the church sery- 
ices, by the souls won to Christ, by the young 
men recruited for the ministry and by the 
contributions to missions, a conservative Church 
will excel a Modernist Church in any and every 
fair comparison. People have doubts enough of 
their own. On the Lord’s day, in the Lord’s 
house, from the Lord’s servant they need faith 
and they want it. They hunger and thirst for a 
constructive program, a positive gospel. Nega- 
tions are wearisome; affirmations are heartening. 
It is unprofitable employment for a minister to 
use the time intended for declaring the whole 
counsel of God in metaphysical vaporings and 
speculative gymnastics. The people wait for the 
‘‘word of the Lord.’’ 

By the time one is set apart to the regular gos- 
pel ministry he should have passed through the 
transitional period of doubt and have reached a 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 183 


degree of certainty concerning those things 
wherein he has been instructed and which he is 
ordained to preach. Should further doubts arise, 
let him believe his beliefs and doubt his doubts 
and not doubt his beliefs and believe his doubts. 
Let him go among the sorrowing and sinning 
masses, put his heart against the pulsing heart of 
humanity, be much in prayer, Bible study, and 
evangelistic effort, and he will come off more than 
a conqueror—win for himself the fight of faith 
and have surplus strength to help others in their 
battles. 

Furthermore, the Modernists are mistaken in 
supposing that they are doing more good than 
harm. 1. They are stirring up a few radical men, 
who are as extreme on one side as the Modernists 
are on the other, to give utterances to as foolish, 
though not as destructive sentiments, as the Mod- 
ernists. 2. They are raising unnecessary ques- 
tions in the minds of many who wonder what it 1s 
all about; who cannot understand how men or- 
dained to preach the New Testament should de- 
vote their time to dissecting it and explaining it 
away. 3. They are diverting their attention, and 
that of others, from the practical and pressing 
problems of Christianity, to criticism and contro- 
versy. 4. They are, unintentionally I wish to 
believe, reflecting upon the character and candor 
of Jesus who taught us to believe in the unseen 
and inscrutable and said he was too honest to per- 
mit us to be deceived: ‘‘If it were not so I would 


184 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


have told you.’’? 5. They are sowing discord and 
disturbing the ‘‘peace of Zion’’ by preaching ‘‘an- 
other gospel’? which is no gospel. Paul’s words 
come to mind: ‘‘There be some that trouble you 
and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But 
though we, or an angel from heaven preach any 
other gospel unto you than that which we have 
preached unto you, let him be accursed,’ Gal. 
1:8f. 6. They are doing irreparable injury to 
the souls of lost men. A Jesus who was not as 
truly God as man, is disqualified as the mediator; 
he cannot by his death on the cross reconcile a 
holy God and sinful man. A salvation by charac- 
ter is no salvation. It dooms the race to destruc- 
tion: ‘‘For all have sinned and come short of the 
glory of God.’’? The universal conscience of man 
testifies that he is a sinner. An observation of 
universal history testifies that man cannot redeem 
himself. The Bible and Christian experience tes- 
tify that man cannot establish his own righteous- 
ness but must submit himself to the righteousness 
of God ‘‘which is by faith in Jesus Christ.’? 


‘‘There is but One who ne’er rebelled, 
But One by passion unimpelled, 
By pleasures unenticed; 


‘*He from himself his semblance sent, 
Grand object of his own content 
And saw the God in Christ.’’ 


If salvation is by character what becomes of 
the woman taken in sin, or of the woman of 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 185 


Sychar; of Zaccheus the extortioner, or Saul the 
blasphemer? What becomes of Cowper’s stricken 
deer that left the herd if there is no One who 
has himself been hurt by archers to find him and 
draw the arrow from the panting side and heal 
and bid to live? What becomes of Burns’ ‘‘temp- 
est driven’’ if there is not the sure anchor of ‘‘a 
correspondence fixed in heaven’’? What becomes 
of Shakespeare’s ‘‘souls that were forfeited once’’ 
without ‘‘the world’s ransom, blessed Mary’s 
son’’? Oh, what becomes of any and all of us? 
Expurgate your literature, excise the four Gos- 
pels and tear up the Epistles, if salvation is by 
character. They teach salvation for every sinner 
through faith in the redeeming blood and good 
works as the fruit, not the root, of that faith. 

Finally, the Modernists are mistaken in sup- 
posing that they will triumph. They announce 
that you might as well attempt to dam Niagara as 
to stay the tide of Modernism. Men have made 
such vain boasts before. They have said that 
within a hundred years there would be no Bibles; 
they have emblazoned the motto, ‘‘To take the 
crown of deity from Jesus’ brow’’; but the cir- 
culation of the Bible grows apace and Jesus, in 
the thought of millions, still wears his crown. 
The only triumph they can win is in a question- 
able and temporizing compromise by timid offi- 
cials who take counsel of their fears instead of 
contending earnestly for the faith. ‘‘Can two 
walk together, except they be agreed?”’ 


186 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


‘¢Hither in sullen truce or bitter strife 
Still dwell together, but still dwell apart.’’ 


The great body of men and women in all the de- 
nominations are loyal to ‘‘the faith which was 
once delivered unto the saints’’ and they will re- 
main so. It was laymen of intelligence and stand- 
ing who took the initiative and in response to 
whose petition the Bishops issued their pastoral 
letter which so provoked the Modernists. The 
hearts of those in the pews, with exceptions here 
and there, beat true to the divine Savior. 

Then a majority of the ministers, among them 
men the peers of Modernists in any arena, feel 
like Paul: ‘‘I am set for the defense of the gos- 
pel.’’ They will instruct their congregations, con- 
firm their faith, vindicate their doctrine, and dem- 
onstrate that we have not followed cunningly 
devised fables. 

There is a Scripture of solid comfort to troubled 
minds in these unsettled times: ‘‘For we have not 
any power against the truth, but in behalf of the 
truth.’? Fret not yourselves because of assaults 
upon things sacred. They have withstood assaults 
more vicious. They have, like the oak, become 
more deeply and firmly rooted in believing hearts 
during the storms. Jesus Christ guaranteed per- 
petuity to the institution he founded. Hear his 
promise: ‘‘Upon this rock I will build my church 
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’’ 
No weapon formed against that institution pros- 


THE MISTAKES OF THE MODERNISTS 187 


pered. It has an impregnable foundation. It is 
indestructible and irresistible. 


‘‘The church’s one foundation 

Is Jesus Christ her Lord; 

She is his new creation 
By water and the word; 

From heaven he came and sought her 
To be his holy Bride; 

With his own blood he bought her, 
And for her life he died. 


‘‘Though with a scornful wonder, 

Men see her sore opprest, 

By schisms rent asunder, 
By heresies distrest; 

Yet saints their watch are keeping, 
Their cry goes up ‘how long?’ 

And soon the night of weeping 
Shall be the morn of song. 


‘¢ *Mid toil and tribulation, 

And tumult of her war, 

She waits the consummation 
Of peace for evermore; 

Till with the vision glorious 
Her longing eyes are blest, 

And the great church victorious, 
Shall be the church at rest.’’ 


xX 
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 


Christians who accept the Bible as the inspired 
and authoritative word of God are hearing and 
reading disquieting things nowadays from reli- 
gious sources. The names of renowned scientists 
are heralded from the pulpits as guides to truth, 
though such scientists disbelieve in the Savior- 
hood of him who said, ‘‘I am the truth.’’ One 
may hear pulpit utterances which make the im- 
pression that the agnostic, Huxley, is to be be- 
lieved rather than Moses. It is urged that we 
must revise our interpretations of Genesis so as 
to adjust them to the theories of Darwin and 
Huxley. Neither of these men would so much 
as affirm the existence of God nor even that there 
was an intelligent purpose in nature. As to 
Moses, a process of criticism has been going on 
which denies his authorship of the Pentateuch; as 
to Darwin and Huxley, a practice of praise is tak- 
ing place which exalts them to positions of great 
teachers of divine truth. In fact they were agnos- 
tics as were their contemporaries, Spencer and 
Tyndall. Darwin had the greatest brain of the 
four. Though not the most logical, he was the 
most reverent. In the closing chapter of his 


‘‘Origin of Species’’ he refers to the Creator and 
188 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 189 


he did contribute to Foreign Missions. But after 
giving him all the credit he so richly deserves it 
is a lamentable fact that his theories and pursuits 
landed him in agnosticism. Why do ministers 
eulogize the agnostics instead of those founders of 
modern science—Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Harvey 
and Newton—who accepted the unity, order and 
progression of Genesis; who believed there was 
‘‘mind,’’ ‘‘thought,’’? ‘‘ Almighty power,’’ ‘‘de- 
sign,’’ ‘‘intelligence’’ and ‘‘an intelligent Agent’’ 
in nature. 

Be it remembered that the Christian is a lover 
of truth. He welcomes it from whatever source 
it comes. His attitude is that of cordiality. He 
has nothing to fear from truth. His concern is 
to know ‘‘what is truth.’? He asks that question 
with more seriousness, with a deeper sense of per- 
sonal responsibility, with a finer loyalty to its 
answer than did Pilate in the judgment hall long 
ago. 

The Christian holds that God revealed truth in 
the Bible. Itis the Christian’s text book in morals 
and religion. By its precepts he is bidden to live 
and in the comfort of its promises he hopes to die. 
The Bible is the Christian’s chart and compass on 
the sea of life. Without it he is driven and tossed 
by winds of false doctrine. 

But it is insistently averred: ‘‘The Bible is not 
a textbook on science.’’ We agree that it is not; 
its main purpose is spiritual. Scientific facts are 
mentioned in popular language and only in their 


199 | § THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


religious bearing. However, when the assertion is 
made that the Bible is erroneous in its statements, 
we must demur. It is singularly guarded from 
such mistakes as Plato’s idea that the earth was 
an intelligent being; as the thought of the Ancient 
Sages that the Milky Way was a path showing 
the footsteps of the Sun, or a band of solid sub- 
stance joining the two parts of the globe; as the 
old notions that brutes are human beings in 
changed shapes. Its scientific parallelism is in 
striking contrast with the nebulous, vague and 
contradictory utterances of the so-called Baby- 
lonian Creation Tablets where one makes the beast 
the first creation and another puts man as the 
beginning’; or, with the Hindu idea that the world 
is a flat triangular plain, resting on the heads of 
elephants whose feet rest on the shell of an im- 
mense tortoise and the tortoise on the coil of a 
great snake; and when these elephants shake 
themselves earthquakes occur. 

Any one who examines the Bible with an humble 
and a reverent mind and compares its teachings 
with the ascertained facts (not the conjectures) of 
modern research must have his faith in the Book 
confirmed. Every disputed issue of the Bible 
upon which the archeologist has thrown any light 
has been established. The statements of the open- 
ing chapter of Genesis, the storm center of the 
controversy, are in accord with what is known 
to-day. Prof. Alphonso Smith, of the U. 8S. Naval 
Academy, says: ‘‘It is the one chapter in the Bible 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 191 


that has made science possible. It is the magna 
charta of science.’? To quote Dr. Francis Smith, 
distinguished long-time teacher of Natural Science 
in the University of Virginia: ‘‘The writer of the 
first chapter of Genesis shows a correspondence, 
not with the science of his time, but with that of 
three thousand years later, which the accepted 
doctrine of probabilities makes it impossible to 
attribute to a fortunate guess.’’ One does not 
have to be an erudite scholar to understand this. 
Long and high-sounding words are not needed to 
prove the proposition. 

Genesis says: ‘‘In the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth.’’ No definite time is 
fixed,— whether six thousand years or six million 
years. The time is expressly indefinite and gives 
a place for all that geology may discover. It was 
revealed to the historian that God was the source 
of all. The mind of the typical man rests upon 
that explanation. He knows there must have been 
a first cause; his intellectual faculties demand an 
adequate cause for every effect; his experience 
and observation agree with these faculties; he is 
in a universe of insoluble riddle without the first 
verse of the Bible; with that verse he has the solu- 
tion in a personal Being who is sufficient for all 
things. The bewildered Darwin, in his experi- 
mentations, reached his limit and held up his 
hands with the exclamation that behind all may be 
a ‘‘somewhat.’’ Herbert Spencer’s nearest ap- 
proach to a personal God was the recognition of 


192 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


an ‘‘Infinite and Eternal EKnergy’’ from which all 
things proceed. Huxley contemptuously dismisses 
the subject of Deity with the words: ‘‘It is but 
the weary clatter of endless logomachy.’’ I do 
not worship the ‘‘somewhat’’ of Darwin nor the 
‘‘Hiternal Energy’’ of Spencer; I worship the one 
true and living God who satisfies my reason and 
answers the requirements of my conscience. His 
revealed ways are not wearying to my soul. 
‘‘They are my meditation day and night.’’ 

The scientist is unable to account for matter, 
he is impotent to create matter or life. Neither 
can he unravel the mystery of the process of de- 
velopment. How did invertebrates develop back- 
bones and mammals develop breasts? Hixplain the 
origin and transmission of the eye,—the most 
perfect mechanism known to man. The simplest 
Christian with his Bible can tell more about 
origins than Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and Tyn- 
dall all together. Upon this one phase of the sub- 
ject he knows more than they by searching could 
find out. ‘‘By faith we understand that the 
worlds have been framed by the word of God, so 
that what is seen hath not been made out of things 
which appear,’’ Heb. 11:3. The first chapter of 
Genesis gives an authoritative account of the 
primal source of matter, life and species. Why 
should a Christian exchange a rational account of 
the origin of matter, life, and species for the 
barren negations, illogical conjectures, audacious 
dogmatisms and poisonous gases of skeptical 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 193 


scientists? Why should he not the rather confi- 
dently walk with Pascal, the prince of French 
writers, the peer of all scientists, and the finest 
of mathematicians, in the proved paths of the 
satisfying Scriptures? | 

Consider the order of the creation of life. <Ac- 
cording to the first chapter of Genesis, vegetable 
life appeared first, fish and fowl second, vertebrate 
animals third, and man fourth and last. That 
order is in agreement with the known facts of 
geology. The earliest form of life found in earth’s 
grave is sea weed. Plants in abundance appeared 
before animals. Scientifically, this is necessarily 
so for animals could not subsist upon mineral 
matter. Animals feed upon plants or other ani- 
mals. The horse cannot directly assimilate min- 
erals; he must be fed upon corn, oats, hay, alfalfa 
—these must exist before he can subsist. This is 
common sense and Scripture. ‘‘And God said, 
Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding 
seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his 
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and 
it was so,’’ Gen. 1:11. 

The second order in Genesis is recorded: ‘‘ And 
God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly 
the moving creatures that have life, and fowl that 
may fly above the earth in the open firmament of 
heaven.’’ Geology teaches that the first animals 
were the shell fish. Later, fish with a backbone 
appear and still later the frog and reptile. So 
much is not known scientifically about birds, but 


194 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


they undoubtedly preceded mammals. How did 
the author of Genesis happen to hit upon the order 
which geology and biology discover? There is but 
one sufficient answer: God made it known to him. 

The third order in Genesis is vertebrate ani- 
mals: ‘‘And God said, Let the earth bring forth 
the living creature after his kind, cattle and creep- 
ing thing, and beast of the earth after his kind; 
and it was so. And God made the beast of earth 
after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and 
everything that creepeth upon the earth after his 
kind; and God saw that it was good,’’ Gen. 
1:24,25. The non-Christian geologist must con- 
cede that mammals appeared after plants and fish, 
and before man. He must also admit that there is 
no evidence in the rocks of unbroken progression, 
of intermediate forms, of transitional stages 
among various species. He should see that the 
conclusion of his own investigation requires either 
creation or metamorphosis,—not evolution. Dar- 
win admitted the force of this reasoning: 
‘‘Geology, assuredly, does not reveal any such 
finely graduated organic chain; and this perhaps 
is the most obvious and gravest objection which 
can be urged against my theory.’’ The Bible ac- 
count is not disproved but rather strengthened 
by true science. I protest against that preaching 
or teaching which treats the Biblical account of 
creation as absurd. Point out the absurdity. Do 
not deal in glittering generalities, in sneering in- 
nuendoes, in veiled reflections, in smiling ridicule. 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 195 


Specify. the particulars and present the evidence. 
Moses was better informed than his critics. Gen- 
esis anticipates the latest science. 

Once more, Genesis places man as the last and 
highest order in creation. ‘‘And God said, Let us 
make man in our image after our likeness,’’ Gen. 
1:26. To quote Professor Keyser: ‘‘First came 
the oblique forms of life, which were obviously 
vegetable; then the primal forms of animal life; 
then the higher forms; lastly man himself like a 
crown upon the pedestal of creation.’’ 

Contrast the language used in the creation of 
man with the language used in the creation of 
plants, of fish, of beasts. A dignity is conferred 
upon man: ‘‘Thou hast made him but little lower 
than God,’’ Psalms 8:5. Between him and the 
highest order of beasts there is a vast chasm. 
Hence, no beast could be his consort; God made 
him a companion, a gentle woman. 

Man, as portrayed in the Bible, is a rational, 
moral, social, spiritual being; he is the only 
earthly creature with religious feeling, moral 
sense and perception of the sublime. Such he has 
been as remotely as history traces him. Such he 
is now. He is conscious of an impassable gulf 
separating himself from the lower animals. He 
is, and has ever been, their superior and master. 
Argue as much as you please about fossils, specu- 
late to your heart’s content about processes, the 
everyday man has an intuitive and ineradicable 
conviction that he is above and over all other ani- 


196 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


mals, that he has something within him not akin 
to them, that his destiny is diverse from theirs. 
The only explanation I have ever seen of this dif- 
ference which appeals to my reason is the one 
contained in the Bible. Why apologize for the 
Biblical account? Why call it allegorical when it 
is inseparably connected with the succeeding his- 
tory? Why not proclaim its accuracy since it sat- 
isfies intellect and conscience and without it we 
are in a hopeless muddle? 

Go as far back into the past as you can me 
man is not very unlike the man of the present. A 
Columbia University professor recently had the 
eandor to say that ‘‘all our research fails to re- 
veal any development or material change in the 
intellectual, physical, or moral nature of man from 
his remotest historical appearance until the pres- 
ent.’? If we could trace man back to the first man 
my belief is that we would find the first will re- 
semble the last. Those who have a theory to prove 
have sought in vain for a fossil that clearly proves 
man’s animal origin. The best they can produce 
is the Java specimen with their far-fetched con- 
clusions. Why, four thousand years from now, 
if the world stands so long, some speculative and 
illogical geologist may find the skeleton of a de- 
formed negro of flat forehead, club feet, six toes 
and fingers, such as you may have seen in the flesh, 
and exhibit that skeleton to prove that the people 
of the twentieth century were that type. 

There is another expression, used more than 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 197 


once in the first chapter of Genesis, the truth of 
which we may see every day. It is where God 
says that a thing shall bear ‘‘after his kind, whose 
seed is in itself.’’ That is being demonstrated be- 
fore our eyes daily. The persistence of type of | 
species, the resistance to change, is apparent to 
every observer. You plant wheat and you reap 
wheat; you do not reap oats. You hatch turkeys 
from the eggs of a turkey; you do not hatch chick- 
ens, not even when a chicken hen sits on turkey 
eggs. Who ever got a canary bird from the egg 
of a pigeon? You breed dogs and you get pups; 
you do not get kittens, nor can you breed dogs 
and cats and get a hybrid. The mule is a hybrid 
permitted by God for the utility of man; but the 
mule, whether male or female, cannot propagate. 
Hybrids are invariably sterile. An official of the 
British Museum is quoted as saying: ‘‘In all this 
great museum there is not a particle of evidence 
of the transmutation of species.’’ 

God’s law, ‘‘after its kind,’’ is so strongly in 
force that every one familiar with animal life rec- 
ognizes its uniformity and universality. These 
easily observed things in nature are more in har- 
mony with the traditional interpretation of Scrip- 
ture than are they with the theories of the evolu- 
tionist. If transmutation has been the method, 
if one species originated from a different species, 
why does not transmutation go on before our eyes? 
Why did the Hippus, the boldly proclaimed pro- 
genitor of the horse, remain a Hippus from its 


198 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


origin to its extinction? Clearly because the 
Hippus was always a Hippus. So with man: since 
God made the first one he has been a man. Does 
some one ejaculate ‘‘fogyism’’? Then let him 
take the lowest man and the highest monkey and 
by interbreeding these near relatives produce an 
offspring and thus demonstrate his theory. Until 
that is done I must walk in the light of the Bible, 
experience and common sense. 

Elsewhere I have shown that a special creative 
act of God occurred three times in the first chap- 
ter of Genesis precisely where science has the 
missing links: the origin of matter, the origin of 
life, and the origin of soul. I do not intend to 
repeat that evidence here but it is significant that 
a chapter written centuries before the discoveries 
of modern science contains the data which science 
confesses is wanting in its sphere. Genesis rev- 
erently understood and Geology properly taught, 
fit each other as glove and hand. One’s patience 
is tried by the superficial and frequently blatant 
talk about the allegorical and unscientific language 
of Genesis; by the extravagant pulpit estimates of 
men who rejected the Bible; by the laudation of 
alleged scientific methods to the disparagement 
of the faith of our fathers. 

Instead of emphasizing names and expounding 
theories which discredit the Book, we should, 
when occasion admits, dwell on the phenomenal 
fact that in this record written centuries before 
science unveiled the modern truths of nature there 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 199 


is not one scientific blunder or error. We should 
rejoice that the coincidences and correspondences 
are so many and so marked that a modern scien- 
tist has confessed that ‘‘if one should sketch 
briefly the celestial mechanism of LaPlace, the 
Cosmos of Humboldt and the latest system of 
geology, no simpler and sublimer words could be 
found than those of Moses.’’ We should cling to 
the Bible on the very first page of which the car- 
dinal truths of our faith are indelibly written; 
the existence, unity, personality, wisdom, power, 
government, and goodness of God; the gradual, 
consecutive, cumulative, and harmonious proc- 
esses of nature; the origin, free agency, mission, 
sovereignty and immortality of man. We should 
hold with tenacious faith the Book of books, the 
first sentence of which lays the ax at the root of 
the tree of atheism by announcing God; of 
polytheism by declaring his oneness; of panthe- 
ism by declaring his personality and transcend- 
ence; of deism by declaring his activity and 
government; of agnosticism by positive state- 
ments of knowledge; of: materialism by affirming 
the creation of matter and the supremacy of 
spirit; and of rationalism by presenting the ulti- 
mate religious truth as a revelation. 

It is not fair to say that the Bible and science 
are at war. The outcry of hostility is occasioned 
by misunderstanding and speculation. Misunder- 
standing: there is an essential difference between 
the ground of evangelical knowledge and the 


200 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


ground of scientific knowledge. They represent 
two hemispheres of the world of truth. One is 
based upon experience, the other is based upon 
experiment. A personal experience in one and 
an accurate experiment in the other will not be 
contradictory; for what God reveals in his word 
and in his work necessarily harmonize when both 
are understood. Speculation: some man with an 
hypothesis to prove supposes he has found out 
some new fact and hastens to announce it. An 
amusing incident occurred in Louisiana a little 
while ago. Near Shreveport, road builders un- 
earthed some enormous bones in a deep cut they 
were making through a hill. Wide attention was 
attracted by the bones. Geologists inspected them 
and pronounced their verdict with assurance; the 
remains of some enormous prehistoric animal. 
They spoke with such finality that their opinion 
was generally accepted. It was proposed to raise 
a fund to mount these bones for exhibition in a 
museum. Unexpectedly, something transpired; 
an unsophisticated farmer read about the bones in 
the papers. One day he went to town, called upon 
an editor and enquired: ‘*Why all this ado about 
those bones?’’ The editor asked if he knew any- 
thing about them. ‘‘Surely,’’? he said, and then 
told that years ago Barnum and Bailey gave a 
circus in Shreveport, that one of their largest ele- 
phants died, that they secured a permit from him 
to bury it on his place, and that it was buried on 
the hill through which the road was cut. Exit the 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 201 


theorists, while laughter convulsed the public. 

We do well to recall Luther’s text: ‘‘For ever, 
O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven,’’ Psalm 
119: 89. He had it written in charcoal on the walls 
of his chamber, and wrought in embroidery on 
the dress of his servants. Earthly changes reach 
not the heavenly sphere; and there the Word of 
God is fixed beyond the touch of disturbing fingers. 
Modern science has upset the notions of centuries 
but it is unable to prove the testimony of the Bible 
to be false. In honesty it should admit the concord 
between what God has revealed in the ages of the 
rocks and in the Rock of Ages. 

We also do well to recall that the Lord of Life, 
the One who broke the bands of the grave and 
crushed the skull of death, put his imprimatur . 
upon the Old Testament. His own words are: 
‘‘Hor had ye believed Moses, ye would have be- 
lieved me; for Moses wrote of me,’’ John 5: 46; 
‘‘Hor as Jonah was three days and three nights in 
the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Man be three 
days and three nights in the heart of the earth,’’ 
Matt. 12:40; ‘‘For verily I say unto you, Till 
heaven and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall 
in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled,”’ 
Matt. 5:18. Christ not only put his stamp upon 
the Old Testament, he preauthenticated the New 
Testament, John 16:12-15. One cannot destroy 
the validity of the Bible without impeaching the 
authority of Christ. 

The Bible is the world’s most marvelous book. 


202 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


The more it is studied the more marvelous it ap- 
pears. It is marvelous that it used in the creation 
account a word for day (yom) which means an 
indefinite period of. time. (Compare Gen. 2:4; 
Ps. 95:8; John 8:46.) It is marvelous that in 
the same account the day begins with evening, and 
chemical light precedes the appearance of the sun, 
just as geology teaches that the first light was cos- 
mical. It is marvelous that, though Hipparchus 
fixed the number of stars at 1,022, and Ptolemy 
at 1,026, twenty-two hundred years before Galileo 
turned the telescope on the heavens and disclosed 
innumerable stars, Jeremiah said: ‘‘The host of 
heaven cannot be numbered.’’ It is marvelous 
that, several thousand years before Copernicus, 
Kepler, and Galileo taught the true law of the 
solar system, Job taught that the earth is not flat 
(26:7) and that the movements of the heavenly 
bodies do not vary (38:12). It is marvelous that, 
though philosophers like Aristotle and Bacon did 
not believe the air had weight and thirty centuries 
before the discovery that it did, the oldest book in 
the Bible should say: ‘‘To make the weight for 
the winds (atmosphere),’’ Job 28:25. It is mar- 
velous that, long before Redfield announced his 
theory of storms showing that they were not law- 
less, Solomon should say substantially the same 
thing, Eccles. 1:6. It is marvelous that, centuries 
before uninspired man discovered the law of 
evaporation and explained how the waters which 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 203 


flow to the sea do not overflow, but return in 
vapor to water the land, the Bible should state the 
fact explicitly: ‘‘All the rivers run into the sea; 
yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence 
the rivers came, thither they return again,”’ 
Eccles. 1:7. It is marvelous that twenty-six cen- 
turies before Harvey discovered the circulation otf 
the blood the Bible should, in a poetic description 
of death, describe the spinal marrow (the silver 
cord), the skull which encloses the brain (the 
golden bowl), the lungs (the pitcher at the foun- 
tain), the heart (the wheel at the cistern)—a 
‘‘wheel pumping up through one pipe to discharge 
through another,’’ Eccles. 12:6f. So marvelous 
are these and other facts that so competent an 
authority as Sir John Herschel expressed the 
opinion: ‘‘ All human discoveries seem to be made 
only for the purpose of confirming more strongly 
the truths that have come down from on high and 
are contained in the sacred writings.”’ 


‘‘Were all the seas one chrysolite, 
The earth a golden ball, 
And diamonds all the stars of night, 
His book were worth them all.”’ 


The Bible is a fortress which has withstood 
every attack from Celsus to Percy Stickney Grant. 
Men have hurled against it the paper wads of 
their own fanciful theories ignited from their own 
powder. There it stands like Jackson at Man- 


204 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


assas, ‘‘a stone wall’’; like Gibraltar at whose 
base the waves break in fury. The Bible is an 
anvil upon which infidels have beaten and broken 
their hammers. | 


‘‘Last eve I stood beside the blacksmith’s door 
And heard the anvil ring the vesper chime; 
Then looking in, I saw upon the floor 
Old hammers worn with beating years of time. 


‘* “How many anvils have you had,’ said I, 
‘To wear and batter these hammers so?’ 
‘Only one,’ said he, ‘the anvil 
Wears the hammers out, you know.’ 


‘*And so, I thought, the anvil of God’s word 

For ages skeptics’ blows have beat upon, 
And though the sound of falling blows was 
heard, | 

The anvil is unhurt—the hammers gone.’’ 


The Bible is a bridge spanning the deep river 
of life, built of steel and concrete by inspired 
workmen. The foaming floods have never shaken 
its adamantine foundation. It has never needed 
repair and no one need doubt its security. On its 
stone floor, worn smooth by the feet of devout pil- 
grims, millions have crossed on to glory and by it 
we must cross over if we would walk with safety. 

The Bible is a flower garden. Its lessons are 
fresher than the unmelted dew on the morning 
rose. Its truths are sweeter than the honey of 
Hymettus. Christian, go learn of the bee. It 


TRUTH ABOUT THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 205 


lights and lingers upon the flower where the sweet 
juices are stored ‘‘in a flask fairer than ala- 
baster.’’ It sucks the honey and needs no other 
proof that the flower-cup holds the nectar. It fills 
its sack and spreads its heavy-laden wings for its 
return flight to the hive to make food for the 
young and sweets for man. Go thou and do like- 
wise. Hxtract the nectar from the blossoms which 
bloom on every page of Holy Writ. Store the sym- 
metrical cells of memory and heart with the treas- 
ures of God’s truth and impart these riches to 
others. Find thy delight in patient, prayerful 
pentration of God’s Word and thy duty in con- 
veying its truths to those who have them not. Say 
with the Psalmist: 


‘How sweet are thy words to my taste! 
Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!”’ 


This reasoning and appeal are, perhaps, not 
needed by the seasoned Christian. You have been 
in the crucible, and you came out with a faith re- 
fined. Not so with our young church people, per- 
chance our own children. The difficulties that 
arise from science and criticism are perplexing 
many of them, are shaking the faith of afew. In 
certain colleges and universities Scriptural teach- 
ings are treated with supercilious disdain or smil- 
ing ridioule. What are we to do in such a situa- 
tion? We know that the experiences of life will 
chasten and change most of them; that greater 


206 THE SUPERNATURAL JESUS 


and permanent difficulties will enter into the very 
structure of their maturer lives and steady them; 
that when they shall have felt the broken heart 
and found the balm in Gilead, the only balm, that 
when they shall ‘‘have passed through the Valley 
of Humiliation and emerged victorious at the 
other end, they will not be greatly troubled by 
science and destructive criticism.’’ But, what are 
we to do with them in the meantime? What is to 
become of them in all the days intervening before 
the lightning falls on the roof tree, or the Angel 
of Death spreads his black wings over their 
homes? This much at least we can do; be patient 
and sympathetic, be intelligently interested in 
their perplexities, be equipped with the armor of 
faith for every friendly combat, concede nothing 
vital, more closely inspect the teaching in the 
schools, and trust that in God’s own good time he 
will bring them his way. 


THE END 











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